survey costs

The Number Of Respondents Needed For A Statistically Accurate Survey

Survey Tips

When building your survey, there are a number of things to keep in mind including the type of survey you want to conduct, which survey tool to use, what your population will be, and which questions to ask. As if you don’t already have enough to figure out, you should also be considering what sample size you’ll need to achieve statistical confidence.

What is statistical confidence? It’s the knowledge that your survey is statistically significant, that it will actually represent the population as a whole.

You want to get enough completed surveys so you know it is an accurate representation.

In this article, we look at the number of respondents needed for a statistically accurate survey. Here are the steps to take:

Know Your Population

The first step is figuring out the size of the population you want to survey. For example, if you want to survey all of the women who attend your local college, determine the size of that whole population.

Decide on Your Margin of Error

More technically speaking, you want to know your confidence interval or margin of error. This goes back to that statistical confidence. How sure do you want to be that your responses will represent the survey population?

In standard surveys, the widely accepted confidence interval is 5%. We suggest aiming for nothing higher than 10%.

Pick Your Confidence Level

When it comes to your confidence level, we’re talking about how accurately your population is represented by your sample.

In standard surveys, the confidence level is 95%. This means that you’d get the same results 95% of the time even if you chose different samples. Go on up to 99% if you’d like, but don’t go below 90%.

Set Your Sample Size

How many responses do you need to get back for an accurate survey? This is not the same as the number of people who take your survey. It’s how many you need to get returned.

Estimate Response Rate

This involves some guesswork on your part. But you have to make a good estimate in order to decide how many surveys you need to send. A standard response rate would be between 10-15%.

But, if you’re offering an incentive for completing your survey, you can expect a higher response rate. Consider the college women mentioned above – offer them a coupon for a free meal, and your response rate should be higher.

Doing the Math

Now it’s time to do the math. You can use a handy calculator like the one at the National Statistical Service, or you can use some simple math.

To know how many people you should send your survey to, you want to take your sample size (how many responses you need back) divided by the response rate.

For example, if you have a sample of 1,000 and an estimated response rate of 10%, you would divide 1000 by .10. Your survey group should be around 10,000.

Remember that your response rate may affect the number of people you need to send your survey to.

If your response rate is higher, you might not need to ask as many people to complete your survey. In the above example, if your sample size is 1,000, but your response rate is 25%, you only need to send your survey to 4,000 people.

Final Thoughts

Before you start working on the number of respondents needed for a statistically accurate survey, make sure to ask yourself the following questions:

What will I do with the data I collect? If I need to compare subgroups, do I have enough people for a comparison?
How much error can I tolerate? Do I need to be very precise? Consider the presidential polls of late – their margin of error is usually +/- 3 percentage points. How exact do you need to be?
What is my budget? Will it allow for an exceptionally large group of respondents?
How is my confidence level? Do I know if the true population value falls within my level of confidence?

While there are many variables to consider, the basic formula of sample size divided by response rate should suffice for most surveys. (tweet this) If you have any questions about survey size for a statistically accurate survey, feel free to ask them below.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free SurveyTown trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: William White

5 Cost-Effective Ways To Get People To Take Your Online Survey

Survey Tips

So, you’d like to send a survey. You’re ready to learn more about how people perceive your business and your products or services. Maybe you’ve even gone so far as to create a great survey.

Yet, something is holding you back.

If you’re like many of the businesses we talk with every day, you may be unsure where to find people to take your survey.

Today, we look at five cost-effective ways to get people to take your online survey. We’ll help you root out the best ways so you can get the best respondents to take your survey.

1. Send It To Your Email List

With more than 72% of adults in the United States voicing the preference that they prefer companies to communicate with them via email, you can rest assured that sending your survey to your email subscriber list is a good idea.

Simply create your survey and send it to your email list of people who opted-in to receive communication from you. You don’t have to send it to your entire list if you don’t want.

You might select a sample group or a specific niche of your email list. For example, if you are a retail golf company, and you want to learn what preferences men have when it comes to their golf shoes, you can skip sending it to the women on your list.

Tip: Personalize your email salutation. Emails with a personal salutation usually result in increased open rates which mean your surveys get reviewed more often.

2. Provide a Link on Social Media

Assuming that you have a good presence and an adequate following on Twitter or Facebook, or other social media platform, you can post links to your survey.

This is one of the quicker and more cost-effective ways to get your survey out to respondents. You might think about adding some disqualification questions. This helps you weed out your target audience.

Using the golf example above, you could disqualify people if they don’t play golf.

3. Offer a Prize
Another cost-effective way to get people to take your online survey is to offer them a prize. An example – email subscribers received a survey from their local grocery store with the offer that they’d be entered into a drawing to receive a $50 Amazon gift card for completing the survey.

Offering prizes or incentives for taking your survey is a great way to entice respondents without spending too much money.

4. Post It On Your Website
You can always post a link to your survey on your website or blog. You can post these links to ask questions of your website visitors. It’s a great place to post a survey about their experience with your website and their purchases.

5. Use a QR Code at Purchase
What is a QR code? It’s an encoded image that users can view on their smartphones. With this option, you would embed the survey link in the QR code. You can even create these codes online for free using your survey link.

If you have a brick-and-mortar location, you can embed the QR code on your receipts. For online purchasers, you can email the code.

Final Thoughts
Make it easy for participants to take your survey. Once you provide a link, take users straight to the survey. If you take them link-traveling, you’ll lose them.

Keep your instructions simple and only ask the questions you really want to know the answer to. (tweet this)

Lastly, before you create your survey, you want to identify your target audience. Decide who you want to take your survey. This helps you narrow down the pool of survey respondents.

Once you’ve decided on a target audience, you can decide which one of the five cost-effective ways you are going to use to get people to take your online survey.

You aren’t limited to just one avenue, though. You can use as many of these cost-effective ways as you’d like!

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Images: Lloyd Dirks

How Much It Costs To Create An Online Survey

Product Information

Surveys benefit businesses across a wide-range of industries. Why? Surveys help you uncover answers to questions that can propel your business into increased success. (tweet this)

When you send surveys out to your customers, you can strategically plan and structure your surveys to learn about your customer’s likes, dislikes, preferences and potential desires.

Online survey and polling lets you gather and analyze feedback from your customers so you can fine tune your business offerings.

Knowing that surveys can benefit your business in a number of ways, you probably want to know how much they’re going to cost you.

The costs for online surveys vary depending on your needs. With prices ranging from free to $70 per month, let’s look at how much it costs to create an online survey.

The Basic Free Version

With the free version, you can have one survey going at a time. This version works for very small businesses who don’t need to run multiple surveys. It’s also a nice option if you want to run a survey one time to see how it works for you.

You can pose 10 questions on your survey and collect unlimited responses. The free option also gives you reporting options so you make decisions from the results of your survey.

The Standard Version

At $15 a month, this version gives you the same benefits of the free version with the addition of CSV export options and email notifications so you can make decisions from the results of your survey.

The Professional Version

For just $35 per month, this is a robust options that works for a wide range of business sizes. Everything in the above versions is at your fingertips. Plus, you can set report filters and redirects for your customers after they complete their survey.

Another bonus of this version is the ability to set open and close dates for your survey, and you also have API access.

The Enterprise Version

Big businesses – this $75 per month option is for you. Count on all the features of the versions we’ve discussed thus far, plus you can add more users so more than one person can use the account. You also have access to roles and permissions for added usability.

To Conclude

Now that you know how much it costs to create an online survey, you can start your free trial today.

Worth mentioning, too, is that if you’re an agency, you can use our white label options so you can manage multiple accounts. Choose your skins, create sub-accounts and integrate the product with your domain name.

Ready to get started with your free trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Images: Yoosun Won