10 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Student Surveys

A student survey is a tool used to collect information about students' opinions within the context of their academic and campus experiences. The information collected is typically used to improve the educational program, resources, and student supportive services. All in all, an effective student survey yields data that can help those carrying it out to provide a better educational experience. However, it is easy to mess up when designing student surveys. Here are 10 common pitfalls to avoid when administering a student survey.

1. Overcomplicating Questions

One of the most frequent problems is getting too clever with questions, either by wording them too complexly, using big words or jargon that can make them seem like riddles, or not speaking in the correct language. Design for people who might not have an advanced education – ask your friends and family to provide possible answers and check that your questions are clear. Keep it simple. Don’t try too hard. Expectations of engagement can lead researchers to craft responses with multiple parts that might confuse respondents.

2. Leading Questions

Avoid priming “leading” questions that suggest the right answer: “Don’t you think that …” or “Wouldn’t you agree that …?”. Those approached will seek to answer correctly rather than honestly. Thus, your data will be tampered with. This is why it’s important to be neutral with questions. If you think that’s too hard for you, you can always ask for help online. There are many websites where you can pay to write essay or compose a student survey – their writers will do any task perfectly. They can also read through your survey and help you identify and fix any mistakes.

3. Neglecting Survey Logic

Leonard Nimoy once said, “Logic is the beginning of wisdom”. You should take this principle into account when creating your survey. Not using survey logic to tailor the experience based on responses can lead to irrelevant questions. Utilize branching and skip patterns to keep the survey relevant and engaging for each respondent, improving the overall quality and accuracy of the data collected.

4. Asking Too Many Open-ended Questions

Though they allow for rich responses, open-ended questions are hard for respondents to answer and difficult for you to parse. Use them sparingly. Instead, mix in more multiple-choice or Likert-scale questions that are easier for participants to answer – and for you to sum up.

5. Inadequate Response Options

At a minimum, every question must allow for a full and appropriate range of responses. Not doing so risks angering participants or forcing them into choices that do not reflect their actual opinions or experiences.

6. Overlooking Demographic Questions

You could render your data unusable by forgetting to include a key demographic question, such as asking how old someone is or their ethnic background. Likewise, you could achieve a similar result by asking questions that are tedious to answer or too personal for the respondent, especially if they feel those questions are irrelevant to the purpose of the survey.

7. Making All Questions Mandatory

Trying to force each respondent through to the end of the online experience can lead to survey fatigue and respondents abandoning the survey altogether. You need to make sure that only the most essential questions are mandatory and allow respondents to ‘branch off’ from any questions that they do not feel comfortable answering or that they perceive as irrelevant.

8. Ignoring the Survey's Length

Busy students don’t always participate in long surveys. Statistics show that only about 9% of respondents complete long questionnaires. Thus, keep your survey short but don’t reduce the quality of your questions. A good measure is whether your survey takes more than 10-15 minutes to complete.

9. Lack of Pre-testing

If your survey is not pre-tested on a small group of people first, a number of flaws may not become apparent until full deployment. Here’s how you pre-test your survey:

10. Ineffective Data Analysis Plans

Creating and sharing a survey without a solid plan for analyzing the results can lead to missed insights. Here's how to avoid that:

• Develop an Analysis Plan: Set up your strategy for analyzing responses before launching the survey.
• Define Key Metrics: Identify the data most valuable for making decisions.
• Ready Reporting Tools: Ensure you have the necessary tools to analyze the data as responses come in.
• Align Goals with Questions: Craft your survey questions to gather data that aligns with your analysis plan.

This approach ensures you can make informed decisions based on the survey data you collect.

Sharpen Your Survey Skills

Armed with this checklist, avoiding such pitfalls when designing surveys for your students can greatly enhance the quality of your data and the conclusions you can draw from it. Each point is a step toward creating a survey that not only tends to get submitted by more respondents but also produces data that’s clearer and more specific to your goals. With careful planning and thoughtful question construction, your survey can accurately echo the voice of its respondents.