We call survey the procedure or system of procedures for obtaining and investigating information (data), which are of interest to us, collecting said information through questions addressed to a representative portion of the population, to find out aptitudes, orientations, opinions, behaviors, positions and trends, towards specific issues that are of interest to us.
Surveys are used by various companies, businesses, service providers, industries, and institutions of various kinds, so that in this way they can find patterns or guidelines to follow, to improve a service, obtain and / or satisfaction of a certain market, capture the opinion about a product or service, the improvement of a product or service, know if a new product could be accepted by a certain market, to know the popularity or acceptance of a service, a product, an institution or of some person, as well as to probe the opinion in cases like possible electoral tendencies, to determine the popularity of an official, to know the general opinion of the people on a certain project or subject, etc.
The surveys can be carried out in various ways using of methods appropriate to the occasion, whether for example being carried personally held before the pollster be made in writing (answering a questionnaire), conducting surveys telephone, via the Internet, etc. Generally, in some of them there are questionnaires with pre-established responses (to facilitate the survey itself), giving a pre-established margin within a certain number of possible responses to specific questions.
In some written surveys, there are “boxes” or specific places to choose a particular answer among those that are available to the respondent, regarding a certain question, for the respondent to mark them (or, where appropriate, the interviewer does) , so that the data thus obtained are classified and compared with others, to obtain as a result of the information collected, an opinion or trend towards the next guidelines to be followed (introduction of a product to the market, indicate electoral trends, acceptance or rejection of some product or service, etc.).
Product survey example:
In order to provide you with a better service and better products, cookie industries “Las Galletas de la Abuela”, we give you to try three products of this company and we ask you to answer the following questionnaire, based on your opinion about the product “Very Crunchy Cookies After having tried it.
What did you think of product A?
- Very tasty
- Tasty
- Pleasant
- Unpleasant
What did you think of product B?
- Very tasty
- Tasty
- Pleasant
- Unpleasant
What did you think of product C?
- Very tasty
- Tasty
- Pleasant
- Unpleasant
What did you think of product A?
- Very crispy
- Crunchy
- Regular
- Little crunchy
What did you think of product B?
- Very crispy
- Crunchy
- Regular
- Little crunchy
What did you think of product C?
- Very crispy
- Crunchy
- Regular
- Little crunchy
What product did you like the most?
- Product A.
- Product B.
- Product C.
And finally: would you recommend the consumption of this product to someone?
- I would definitely recommend it.
- I would probably recommend it.
- Possibly yes I would recommend it
- I would not recommend
- I would definitely not recommend it.
Telephone survey example:
Question 1: are you unhappy with our telephone service?
- A: I am satisfied (press number 1).
- B: I am satisfied (press number 2).
- C I am dissatisfied (press number 3).
Are you thinking or have you thought about changing your telephone service provider company?
- A: Yes, (press number 1).
- B: No, (press number 2).
- C: I had not considered the possibility (press number 3).
Have you suffered any injury or mishap with our telephone services?
- A: Yes, I have been constantly crashing (press number 1).
- B: Sometimes I have had phone service failures (press number 2).
- C: I am completely satisfied with the services provided by the telephone company (press number 3).
