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When should you invite people to participate in your survey and what impact will the timing have on the results you get?

A natural disaster like the floods in Australia is a reminder for us professionally about the importance of timing survey distribution and the impact on your results.

There are probably a few of you that are thinking ‘der’, and while this example is fairly obvious, the timing of sending out a survey and what that does to the results is often forgotten.

Firstly, it isn’t only businesses or residents in Queensland that have been affected by floods in January 2011. There is also flooding in NSW and Victoria, and in other countries. People in those communities are going to be more focused on the direct impact of the floods than your survey – regardless of whether it takes 1 or 20 minutes to complete. Right now, they don’t care about your survey.

There are secondary impacts to those outside of the regions directly impacted, such as decreased supply while the affected businesses recover. This causes increased costs and business interruptions to those not directly affected. This will change their priorities in 2011.

In considering this:

• You need to be aware of other factors, such as a flood and other natural and economic disasters, when designing your survey.
• Questions need to be included in your survey that relate to the impact of these as they probably relate to the overall subject of your survey.
• Geographical information is still useful. While more and more business is happening online, we are still physically living in a location that can be affected locally.
• Creating a survey where you can compare the results or the proportion of participants to either national standards (such as Australian Bureau of Statistics data) or your own database, will allow you to understand if a lower proportion of people in affected areas have participated. Your analysis then needs to account for this.
• Acting on the results needs to be fairly fast. Views and opinions can change fast so using the results of a survey you conducted months ago, might not be relevant still. This is why a smaller more targeted survey is probably more useful for your business planning and to drive change in your organisation.

If you are unsure about when you should distribute your survey, or are looking for better solutions, our Survey Design Review can assist or please contact us for further options.

Photo courtesy of Tatters:)