Surveys are often the first or only evaluation tool used by nonprofits, but poor survey design can produce untrustworthy or irrelevant results. This workshop will introduce the fundamentals of good survey design and will be beneficial to anyone who wants to start writing surveys or improve their survey writing.
You will learn strategies to choose, write and test survey questions that are effective for your audience and evaluation purpose. Using skills learned in this workshop, you will be able to write survey questions that improve the usability of the results and your respondents’ experience taking the survey.
As a result of participating in the workshop, participants will:
- Know why to choose a survey over other methods
- Be able to define the purpose of their survey
- Use the survey design process
- Understand the benefits and limitations of different question types
- Learn effective question-writing strategies
- Learn a range of strategies for testing their surveys
- Understand how to encourage survey participation
This workshop covers the fundamentals of effective survey design and is applicable to all survey tools. We will not cover survey graphic design or using particular survey tools – such as online survey software.
Complement your learning from
Effective Survey Design with the upcoming workshop Encouraging Survey Response on Wednesday, May 19 from 9 - 10:30 a.m.
Event Details
This event will have AI captions via Zoom’s transcription function. Please note that these captions are automatically generated by the computer software and may not always accurately transcribe what is said. If you need professional captioning, or have another accessibility accommodation, please
email MCN’s program assistant with your request at least two weeks prior to the start of the event. Although we will attempt to meet all accessibility requests, late request may not be fulfilled.
Speaker Information
Sarah Cohn is a principal consultant at Aurora Consulting. She helps her clients discern their audience’s needs; think about their roles and opportunities as departments, organizations and within broader networks; and build their internal capacity to measure the impact of their organizations and programs. In her experience, complex collaborations with diverse partners succeed when they build in time for listening and honest reflection. She sees her clients as the content experts and herself as the facilitator of nuanced conversations.
Al Onkka is principal consultant at Aurora Consulting. Al is experienced in promoting data-based decision making and organizational learning having worked in the field of evaluation since 2009. Al uses, and builds the capacity of others to use, an evaluative lens to help organizations develop, understand, and improve at the programmatic and organizational level. Al has a master’s degree in evaluation studies from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development and is a member of the Minnesota Evaluation Association’s board of directors.