How to Summarize Survey Results

Surveys can be completed on line.

You can find survey takers at malls and other locations that have a high concentration of people. Surveys are administered on the Internet as well. Company use surveys for a variety of reasons. A decision about producing a product or service can be determined by a survey. You can also help determine the correct price for different commodities. Once a company has all of the completed surveys they try to summarize the data for decision-making purposes. Information in surveys can be summarized in a variety of ways.

Instructions

1. Determine the purpose of a survey. Write an objective regarding your survey. Before you can summarize the results of a survey you need to know what you are looking for. This gives you something to look at for comparison purposes. Knowing what information is included in a survey can help you with your summary. Surveys can capture information containing income/salary, occupation, homeownership, renting, products consumed, region of the country, age, and marital status, just to name a few.

2. Use a graph. You can summarize the results of a survey with a graph. A graph allows you to match categories against each other. For example, your graph can depict the number of people with an income of $50,000 or more who would purchase a product or service for "X" dollars. You can see how the decision to purchase the product changes as the income decreases or increase using the graph. Changes in price can also be used to make a determination about purchases based on a consumer's income. Graphs can be used for any factors used in the survey. An analytical person may want to review survey results in the form of a graph as opposed to a written report. Survey results can also be summarized using charts and tables. People who are visual will like to look at these methods in conjunction with the graphs.

3. Use written reports. A well-written report can provide a thorough summary for a survey. A report allows you to write out the objectives of the survey and what the findings were. Everyone has a preference regarding how they like to receive summarized information. Some people like to read reports because they can dissect and understand the material better. You can talk about percentages, locations, negatives and positives that were discovered through the survey.

4. Summarize the comments. When additional comments are made on a survey they are a little more difficult to summarize than the answers to specific questions. All of the other answers on the survey can easily be tabulated and collected into one area. Comments on a survey have to be read. To summarize the comments you may need to take a sample of all comments and enter them into a computer program that will allow you summarize the results. According to surveygizmo.com using a random sample of the comments will make the process more efficient and effective. This data can be put on an Excel spreadsheet and categorized based on the various comments made.

Tips & Warnings

• According to Bill Johnston, writing on surveygizmo.com, when people take online surveys they provide more comments than they do with paper surveys. He says that this provides more opportunities for more sales and ideas for improving programs.

References

• Colorado State: Verifying and Validating Data
• SurveyGizmo: Analyzing and Summarizing Survey Comments with Excel