Tribal HQ

There are several reasons why I pull out the 2004 Ralph Magazine Readers’ Survey in my Survey Design Masterclass.

Many of our Survey Tips have been on what people do wrong when they design a survey. This time I’m sharing what was done well. While it isn’t perfect, no survey is, it has many strengths.

Appealing to your audience

Ralph Magazine describes itself as catering to the fun loving Australian male who has a fine appreciation for the good looking women of the world.

The survey design did this in several ways

• The cover image was a good looking female
• The incentive was winning a year’s supply of Coopers beer
• The language of the survey is suitable to the market; eg: How long have you been reading Ralph?
  • Not long (less than one year)
  • Quite a while (one to three years)
  • Yonks (more than three years)
  • Ever since Golden Books got boring

Survey is created like a story

The survey starts with easy questions to draw the participants in with them thinking ‘this isn’t too bad, I can help them out by answering this’. A question like, How often do you read Ralph? is an easy to answer first question.

The questions in the middle require more thinking. They include some open responses and matrix questions, but the participant is already in the flow of answering the questions so willing to answer questions that require a little more thought.

It ends with personal questions – Gender, age, marital status, employment status, occupation and personal income. Participants at this stage are more engaged, they’ve almost finished and have an understanding of what the survey is about so are more willing to provide that kind of information.

Had a clear aim so it isn’t too long

There are three pages of questions, while not a mini survey, it isn’t too long for participants to think it is too much work to complete. The three pages also don’t look too full, they have included white space, making it easier to complete.

The aim was clear to them, and you can see that in the survey design so they didn’t extend it with wasted questions. It was a reader survey. They wanted to know about:

• views about Ralph content, the way it is read and how often
• advertising take up and buying interests
• demographics of readers

Keep participants engaged to the end

The survey ends with this…

End notes: Tribe Research didn’t design the survey and don’t necessarily agree with the magazine’s content or all the language in the survey, but it is a good example of a survey in terms of the participants they wanted to complete the survey.

Looking to design your own survey and want to make sure that it is well designed? Our Survey Design Review will have experts review the survey before it’s live.