How to Develop a Survey on HIV/AIDS

When developing a survey for HIV and AIDS, it's important to consider the targeted readership for the survey. If you're focusing on a survey for a medical publication, you want to talk with health professionals and patients. If you're focus is on posting information for teens, you want to talk with teenagers and post the findings on a blog or website where respondents can remain anonymous.

Instructions

1. Decide on the demographic you want for the survey and how you'll conduct the survey. You can choose respondents based on age, race, socioeconomic status, profession or education. You can conduct the survey over the phone, through the mail, in person or through a website.

2. Know what theory or point you're trying to prove with the survey. Use different age groups, genders and ethnicities so you can compare and contrast information.

3. Develop the questions you want on the survey. For a medical survey you want to ask about treatments and their effect, the current life span of someone with HIV or AIDS, preventive measures, strides taken in AIDS research, how the medical field assists people living with HIV and AIDS and how medical professionals prevent contracting HIV when working with patients.

4. Focus a survey aimed at teens more on HIV and AIDS education. Develop questions that ask about attitudes toward unprotected sex, ways HIV and AIDS are contracted, ways to protect yourself from contracting HIV, how many people they know living with HIV or AIDS and how they talk about HIV and AIDS with people they know.

5. Formulate the questions into different formats. Ask straight questions such as, "How can you prevent yourself from contracting HIV?" Create some true and false questions like, "Sharing needles is a way to contract HIV." Throw in some personal questions answered with "yes" or "no" like, "Do you know someone who is living with HIV or AIDS?"

6. Create your survey by typing it up and mailing it to people who've agreed to take it, calling respondents and recording their answers, meeting with people in person for an interview or setting up a website with the questions.

7. Publish the results using pie charts, bar graphs or plain percentages. Make sure the results help prove or disprove your reason for the survey, and that the narrative for each percentage explains the survey results.