I have collected here various items that will eventually be integrated into larger discussions. I have labeled each one with an appropriate key survey term.
Conditional logic: Rather than the hosting software serving a question based on an earlier answer – a conditional logic question, here is an example of doing it by hand, so to speak, from the State Bar of Michigan 2023 Economics of Law Survey. This old-fashioned method doesn’t shorten the survey and could lead to a respondent answering it by mistake.
No law firm, department, or vendor leaks its internal survey to the outside world. Of course not. But here the focus instead is on external surveys. Most sponsors take pains to prepare a handsome PDF report. Then they allow – actively encourage, in fact – anyone to download it from their website, often after the downloader provides contact information. Additionally, sponsors e-mail the report to all their survey’s respondents. But those paths are not the only ones; here are seven other ways to release a survey’s findings to the public.
For sponsors, reaching prospective clients motivates and dominates their thinking about whether to roll out a survey. Survey reports promote the expertise of the sponsor and raise awareness of it among potential buyers. Burnishing a firm’s brand, a survey showcases the knowledge possessed by the partners or executives, their relationships with prospects and clients, and what they know about legal issues. Combining those resources with proprietary data, previously unseen findings, and graphical capabilities, a survey’s published report makes tangible the smarts of the sponsor.
As you carry out surveys, you begin to realize that many decisions you make cut both ways, so to speak. You gain because you take one fork, but you lose something too. I consider these bi-valent decisions to be under the rubric of trade-offs. The more aware you are of what you give up to gain something, the sharper will be your survey projects. Thought of most broadly, every survey project creates opportunity costs, a manifestation of a trade-off.
Two responses from the same person happen when a survey is kept open for multiple months or when the sponsor sets in motion multiple ways of letting people know about the survey. Inevitably, people forget that they have completed the survey (ouch, not a memorable survey!). It is important to cull duplicate submissions because they will distort findings, especially if you subset your data into relatively small groups.
You can cut down on the number of duplicate responses by barring more than one response from the same ISP address.