For a survey to be effective and provide reliable results, it is essential to pre-test it before its official launch. This often neglected step is however crucial to avoid biases, errors and guarantee the relevance of the results. Discover in this article the issues around pre-testing, the key steps to succeed, and the concrete benefits you can derive from it.
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Why pre-test an online survey?
Before the official launch, it is essential to pre-test your survey to guarantee its success. A pre-test allows you to identify and correct any issues, in order to maximize the quality of the responses.
Avoid biases and errors
The preconceptions of survey designers can generate biases in how the questions are worded and which possible responses are provided. The pre-test allows you to spot biases and correct them. The same goes for any potential errors or ambiguities.
Guarantee relevant results
Verifying that the questions asked provide the expected information and that the response formats are suitable is essential. The pre-test guarantees the relevance of results by allowing you to optimize the questionnaire.
Optimize response rate
A confusing or overlong questionnaire will cause drop-off. The pre-test allows you to streamline the respondent journey, remove any superfluous questions, and optimize response rate.
Key steps to efficiently pre-test your survey
To guarantee survey quality, it is essential to pre-test it before launch. Here are the 3 indispensable steps to achieve this.
Define a test sample
Select a small group of people representative of your target audience. Make sure to include varying profiles in terms of age, gender, experience, etc. The ideal is between 10 and 30 testers.
Analyze feedback and difficulties encountered
Examine the responses to see where testers struggled. Identify any ambiguous or overly complex questions. Analyze drop-off rates and response times.
Make any necessary corrections
Based on the above analyses, simplify ambiguous wording, clarify instructions, remove or modify problematic questions. Make any required optimizations to the questionnaire.
Concrete benefits of pre-testing
Conducting a pre-test before launching a survey is essential to ensure its success. Indeed, this crucial step allows you to verify its clarity, flow and relevance.
Improved quality of data collected
By identifying ambiguous wording, poorly understood questions or potential biases, the pre-test allows you to correct issues and ask the right questions the right way. Data collected at the end will therefore be more reliable, consistent and better leverageable to draw meaningful insights.
Time and efficiency savings
Although the pre-test requires initial effort, it saves time further down the line by avoiding having to re-field a poorly designed survey. Results will also be quicker to analyze.
Respondent satisfaction
A smooth, glitch-free questionnaire guarantees a better experience for respondents. This increases response rates and quality of data collected.
Common mistakes to avoid when pre-testing an online survey
When conducting a pre-test, it is critical to keep in mind some common mistakes that can skew results. These range from question wording to participant sampling and survey structure itself.
Not including diversity in the tester sample
One of the most frequent errors is not ensuring diversity in the tester sample. A homogeneous panel can lead to biased, unrepresentative results for the target population. It is therefore key to guarantee a variety of profiles among participants, in terms of age, gender, user experience and other relevant factors.
Ignoring participant feedback
Paying close attention to testers’ reactions and comments is critical for identifying the questionnaire’s weaknesses. Not taking these into account would be a major oversight.
Rushing to launch the final survey
It can be tempting to want to quickly launch the final live survey. However, taking the time to make all necessary optimizations following the pre-test is essential to guarantee quality.
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Read the article:
French – L’importance de pré-tester un sondage en ligne, click here
German – Die Bedeutung des Prä-Tests von Online-Umfragen, click here
Portuguese – A importância de pré-testar uma pesquisa online, click here
Polish – Znaczenie przetestowania ankiety online przed jej uruchomieniem, click here