Welcome back. By now, you should have created a list of evaluation questions related to your quality standards for the Sauce & Spoon tablet roll out project and added evaluation indicators for each question. In this video, we'll discuss the survey development process, and I'll explain how a survey question is different from an evaluation question. Surveys are one of the tools that project managers use to get answers for their evaluation questions. There are lots of methods for collecting data, and surveys are a popular method in project management. In a survey, each respondent answers a set of clearly-defined questions, and the data are collected and analyzed. This data could be used to demonstrate specific examples of the evaluation indicators you identified for your project. For the tablet rollout, Peta has decided to create customer surveys as a way to get answers to the project's evaluation questions. So in an upcoming activity, you'll write a set of survey questions and add them to your quality management plan. Being able to develop a survey and write survey questions is important because it demonstrates your ability to understand the goals of your project and assess how your stakeholders and users value the project. This helps you determine if you're achieving your quality goals and where you need to make adjustments. Let's start with a brief review of surveys. Surveys are tools you can use to evaluate and measure the quality of a project's process, goal, or deliverable. Making surveys a part of your quality management plan is one way to help you understand what's working and what's not working. Surveys assess the criteria you want to evaluate and provide you with data that will point out whether you've met your quality standards. Designing an effective survey that will deliver the data you want is a skill and follows a strategic development process. First, you'll need to develop evaluation questions and define your evaluation indicators, which you've already done. Then you can determine what type of survey to design and questions to ask that will give you the data you need to answer your evaluation questions. Since you've already come up with your evaluation questions and indicators, the next step is to determine what types of survey questions you're going to ask as a reminder. A survey question is different from an evaluation question. An evaluation question is a key question about the outcomes, impact, and/or effectiveness of your project or program, whereas a survey question is designed to collect data, which can help you answer your evaluation questions. In other words, survey questions are a more direct interpretation of your evaluation questions, designed to get data points. Let's consider a specific example: the Sauce & Spoon evaluation question that asks, "To what extent do tablets increase work performance?" One of the indicators of work performance is how much side work the staff are able to complete during a shift. Some corresponding survey questions might be: Are the tablets easy to use? Was there enough time during the training to practice and ask questions? On average, how many of your side work tasks are you able to complete during a shift? Since using the tablets, how often have you sent back an incorrect order? The answers to these questions will give you data to track and answer your evaluation questions. So how do you write effective survey questions that will address what you're trying to evaluate? There are two different types of survey questions you can ask, open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions require more than one-word answers, such as yes or no. They ask respondents to answer in their own words. For example, what went well during the presentation? What did you find most useful or interesting about the presentation? The point is that the respondent has to construct their own answer to the question rather than selecting from a list of predetermined answer choices. Closed-ended questions can be answered with a single response, like yes or no or true or false or selecting a single answer from a list. Let's examine three types of closed-ended questions in more detail. The first type of closed-ended question asks for yes/no or true or false answers. These are questions like "Did you order an appetizer?" and "Have you eaten at this restaurant before?" The second type of closed-ended question is multiple choice. Multiple choice questions have—you guessed it—multiple answer choices. You're usually instructed to select one of the answer options or to select all that apply. The question could be something like "How often do you dine at this location each month?" and then a range of answer options like zero to one, two to three, four to five, and five or more. A third kind of closed-ended question is a scaled question. Scaled questions provide more than two options, but they're different from multiple choice because they ask the respondent to rate their answers on a scale. For example, how often something occurs, how much they like or dislike something, or how important they think something is. A sample scaled question might be "On a scale of one to five, how do you rate your overall dining experience, with one being poor and five being excellent?" Regardless of the question type, creating good survey questions is a skill that takes a bit of practice. Here's some tips. First and foremost, make sure your questions are asking what you mean to ask. Each question should be specific and address only one measurable aspect. Be careful not to make assumptions about your respondents. For example, don't assume that everyone taking your survey knows or enjoys the same things or has similar life experiences. Ask questions and provide answer options that allow people to answer accurately about their experience. At the same time, you want to make sure that your questions don't provide too much detail or information. If you do, you might end up influencing the respondent to answer in a certain way, which could unintentionally create bias. Wow, that was a lot of information. Let's review so it's fresh in our minds. Survey data helps you determine if you're achieving your quality goals and where you need to make adjustments. Surveys can also help you understand what's working and what's not working, help you assess the criteria you want to evaluate, and provide data that will point out whether you've met your quality standards. The survey development process includes developing evaluation questions, defining your evaluation indicators, and determining what type of survey to design and questions to ask. In the next activity, you'll review your quality management plan and create survey questions for one of Sauce & Spoon's evaluation questions. Then I'll meet you in the next video to discuss how to present the data that gets collected from your survey.
