Surveys are one of the most reliable means to get data. They are less time-consuming and mostly quantitative. As such, you have a high chance of getting more respondents to feel your survey form than looking for individuals to interview if it is interviewed.

Here is how to turn survey responses into data:

Make use of the right platforms

Today, it is not just possible, but very easy to get responses from a wide range of people from different countries. You can easily post your research questions on a website and determine the category of people you want to answer the questions. You will get responses from different people that will meet the requirements for the type of data you want.

One of the survey platforms you might want to host your questions is Mielipidemaailma. However, this should be after you have read reviews about the platform on suomiarvostelut.fi to know what other people in Finland who have used their services are saying about them.

Evaluate your research questions

You have to calculate the results of your survey from your top research questions. You have to consider things like probability sampling, empiricism, etc. when evaluating your top research questions. If you had outlined your goals for the survey when you set the research question, the evaluation will be easy.

For instance, if your respondents were students and you asked if they would like to continue their education at their schools or change schools; that is a top research question. You will get mostly positive, negative, or indecisive answers. From there, you can turn the numbers into percentages and get data out of them.

Cross-tabulate and filter

If you analyze and compared subgroups in your survey, cross-tabulating helps you to get the right data. Delving into the responses by cross-tabulation makes you not be confused about the responses. Another tool you can use is filtering. Filtering is when you focus on a particular subgroup and filter out the others.

Here, you don’t make any comparison between subgroups, you are solely focused on the responses of a particular subgroup. For instance, if you compared men and women in your survey, cross-tabulating means to analyze and compare the results from both genders while filtering means you focus on the results of one of both genders.

Benchmark and compare data

Another way to get data from your survey responses is to benchmark and trade data. For instance, if your survey was based on what attendees had to say about a particular conference, you should have something to benchmark the data against to check for progress.

For instance, you can always get the survey responses of last year’s conference and compare them with this year’s. Doing that makes you see what has improved and what hasn’t. This process, known as longitudinal data analysis, helps you to provide reliable and duplicable data.

Crunch the numbers

This means to analyze the statistical significance of your survey responses. This means you have to assess the accuracy of your data. Your survey results must be accurate not because of random chance, but because they have reached a certain level of confidence. Also, ensure you know as much as you can about your population. For instance, there is a discrepancy already if 80% of your survey respondents were male, but only 15% males were in the conference.

Make your conclusion

The last is to make reports on your survey results. Tell the story your data tells. For everything wrong or did not go as you expected, find out what is wrong. This helps you to know the story behind every number and tell an accurate and reliable story.