Principles of Marketing - Designing a Simple Survey

The first page is your finished survey. Assume that respondents will read and answer on a printed version of your survey. The survey will not be read by a survey researcher or completed in a multi-screen online format, so the page you submit will be exactly what respondents see. Note: your task here is just to design the survey - you don't need to collect any data.

On the second page include two paragraphs that briefly explain: (1) why you chose the questions you did and why you put them in the order you did; and (2) who the sample will be (that is, describe the people you will ask to fill out the survey and why it is important to get their answers in particular).

Questions: The survey design is up to you - you decide what questions to ask, in what order, to best investigate your topic. But make sure to include the following:

At least one question with an open-ended response. An open-ended question is one that allows respondents to reply in their own words, without a predetermined list of responses. For example, if you ask respondents what they like about their favorite supermarket, an open-ended response would give them space to write in whatever answer they like. This type of answer generally requires more thinking and effort for respondents to answer, and is generally more difficult for researchers to code for analysis.

At least one question with a nominal scale. A nominal scale requires respondents to provide a category or descriptor as the response. For example, if you ask which supermarkets respondents have shopped at in the past 30 days, a nominal response scale would give respondents options to choose such as Dans, Fresh Market, Harmons, and Smiths. The response options are mutually exclusive subsets or categories, and the researcher can count the number of responses in each category; no ranking or distance between the alternatives can be assumed.

At least one question with an interval scale. With this type of scale, the researcher is trying to measure the distance between the points on a scale. For instance, if you ask how satisfied consumers are with their usual grocery store, an interval scale could be a 7-point scale with the endpoints marked 1 = Very Unsatisfied and 7 = Very Satisfied. This type of scale allows comparison of the level of satisfaction of two stores (e.g., customers of one store are more satisfied than customers of another store). Finally, include a question of any format to assess respondents' intentions to make a particular purchase (or a particular decision, if your topic doesn't involve a monetary exchange) in the future.

Topic: choose your topic from one of the following lists. Write your questionnaire about just one topic, not all of them from the list:

• Ask respondents if abortion should be legal, and if so in what circumstances.
• For the Utah Jazz organization, measure consumers' attitudes toward the Utah Jazz professional basketball team.
• For auto manufacturers, figure out how likely college students are to buy a new automobile within six months after graduating.

Format: Your survey should fit on one side of a standard 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. Use 11 point Times Roman at the smallest. The layout should be legible and sensible. Again, there is no need to administer the survey to people and collect their data. Just design the survey itself.