5 Ways to Collect Info Without a Survey
Surveys can be a great way to collect information from many people all at once. They can also make it easier to analyze many responses because they are in a standard format. However, surveys also take a lot of time and energy to do well. I’ve found that many clients underestimate how much work it takes to create and distribute a survey that will yield truly useful information.
Surveys aren’t the only way (or sometimes not even the best way) to collect the information you need. There are many other great methods of collecting data. Here’s a list of my favorite ways to collect information instead of or in addition to implementing a survey.
1. Phone Calls / Interviews
If you have a good relationship with your audience members and there are only a few of them, consider picking up the phone and having a conversation. When done well, phone interviews can build or strengthen positive relationships with your audience. Bonus: phone calls allow you to hear the stories behind their answers (not just that they loved the program but what they loved about it and what it meant to them). However, phone calls are time consuming (easily between 15 and 45 minutes) and are not confidential, which means your respondents might not be as honest with you when it comes to negative feedback.
2. Purchase/Registration Forms
When someone is making a purchase from you or registering for something with you, they are a captive audience! This is a great opportunity to ask a couple of important questions. As long as you keep the questions brief and only use a few of them (1-4 questions max), this can be much more effective than a survey. First, you’ll get a 100% response rate! It’s much less annoying to answer one form (a purchase form with a few extra questions) than two forms (a purchase and later a survey).
3. Focus Group
Like phone calls, focus groups give you the opportunity to build or strengthen relationships with your audience. They also allow respondents to hear from and build off of one another’s stories. Focus groups provide excellent quotes and qualitative data. However, focus groups require a lot of effort to get participants to commit to attending. In addition, you will need a partner to help you - one person to facilitate and one person to take copious notes. As with the phone calls, facilitating your own focus group means that participants will not have any confidentiality which can alter their responses in many cases.
4. Reflection Discussion
If you are evaluating a program, class, or other group meeting, consider adding 15 to 20 minutes at the end of the session for a reflection discussion. This will help your participants to better absorb whatever they learned earlier in the session and will help you to get immediate responses about their perceptions of the program. It will also help you build or strengthen relationships with and among the participants. If you choose to use a reflection discussion, be sure to be prepared to capture what the participants say - either asking someone to take notes or recording the session. It’s generally not a good idea to try to facilitate and take notes at the same time.
5. Data You Already Have
Often there is a lot of data available to us that we’re not utilizing to its full potential. Examples might be registration data, purchase history, and website and social media engagement. Consider all the data you have available to you and whether you are able to answer some or all of your questions with it . It may take some effort to dig through your database, but if it already exists, try to avoid asking again in a survey.
6. Survey
I know I said there would be 5 items on this list. But we can’t forget about doing the survey. Sometimes a survey is just the best way to collect the information you need. If that’s the case, check out Before You Send That Survey: Your essential checklist for getting the most useful, actionable information. This is the checklist I use with my clients to make sure their surveys are read to go.