Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Let's get better with surveys!: Support for your questionnaires
This was a draft for a blog post that has since been published at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/06/10/asking-the-right-questions-resources-for-your-survey-strategies/
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Asking the right questions: Resources for your survey strategies
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Wikimedia program leaders can use surveys for many reasons:
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Surveys are an excellent tool for measuring a group's interests, behaviors, learning methods and other feedback. They are a window into the mind. Surveys can give us insight into information we otherwise might not have, enabling us to ask the right questions. For our purposes, surveys can be used to improve programs and projects and ultimately the experiences of volunteers.
Writing a good survey questionnaire takes time. Drafting the questions and asking colleagues or fellow volunteers to provide feedback are important steps in creating a questionnaire. Along each step, we ask ourselves: Are we asking the right questions for the survey goals? Are we asking enough questions to give us the full picture? Are we asking too many questions which might discourage respondents from finishing the questionnaire?
A few months back, the Program Evaluation & Design team created a learning module called Designing Effective Questions aimed at providing theories behind how surveys work with examples on how to improve the quality of questions. In addition to the learning module, we are pleased to announce upcoming events and resources for anyone interested in writing surveys to measure their program outcomes:
1. Survey pilots
Need to prepare a survey? Have an event you would like to assess with a survey? Need to find a better tool for surveys? Email us! We work one-on-one with community members who request assistance with preparing and collecting survey data. For interested groups or individuals, we have a pool of accounts to give you access to the Qualtrics online survey platform. Qualtrics is a good and very easy-to-use tool for writing and collecting survey data with functionality beyond google forms. If you are planning a survey and are interested in trying out the Qualtrics platform, email us at eval@wikimedia.org.
- 2. Let’s talk about surveys: Virtual meetup - June 12 from 4-5 p.m. UTC
- Next week, the program evaluation and design team will be joined by Daria Cybulska (WMUK) and James Hare (WMDC) who will share their recent experiences piloting survey tools for evaluating their programs! Jaime Anstee, Ph.D., and the program evaluation team will also provide a brief overview of the survey tools and resources available. Participants can join the google hangout or can watch via YouTube livestream. Join us!. If you are unable to make it, don’t worry! The video will be available for you to watch later.
3. Wikimedia Question Bank in development
One of the biggest requests we receive is for sample surveys. One problem with sharing specific surveys is that different program leaders write their questions with various objectives in mind. So rather than a large pot of surveys with various scopes and sizes, we are instead building a browsable pool of survey questions that allows anyone to choose the questions that best fit their measurement goals. We have started with a group of questions that we received from the community through survey pilots. Anyone will be able to submit new questions to the bank or have discussions about the questions already in the bank. This will be a useful tool which we hope will help in preparing surveys. Look for the first entries in the Survey Question Bank in our portal in the coming weeks!
Edward Galvez, Associate of Program Evaluation & Design
Feel free to reach out to us at anytime at eval@wikimedia.org
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