Creating a useful survey that entices your audience to respond, however, requires planning and time. Think about it: If a video does not captivate within 10 to 15 seconds, people click off. That’s for an an activity that requires them to just sit back, relax and watch. Now imagine how difficult it is to get people to lean in, to contemplate and analyze their own experiences and reactions as they fill out a survey.

Here are a few tips for journalists on creating a compelling and effective online survey tailored to return results.

Focus

Before you even begin to write up the questions, you need to ask what exactly you are trying to learn from this survey? Just like a well-written article or well-produced Web video piece, keep it focused. Don’t try to cram in questions to cover all the different angles of your topic. Pick a focus and stick to it. And be sure the results are presented quickly and in a way that will be interesting to respondents

Length or Time

No one wants to sit through questions after questions, scrolling and scrolling down a Web page. Once people realize a survey is going on and on, their focus wavers and they put less thought into their answers. So keep it short and choose your questions wisely. Ask only questions that you know you need answered. Each question should result in a data point that works toward goal–whether it is information on source with a particular experience or it backs or disproves a thesis. Here is an example of a brief, focused survey from Lives in Focus: Family Life Behind Bars

In other words, your survey should require minimum scrolling no more than three to five minutes to fill out completely and thoughtfully. Have a look at this survey on unreported crime. What’s the problem here?

Types of Questions

There are numerous categories of questions–from multiple choice to open-ended–that can return exactly what you need if deployed correctly. This survey, done by The Local, was a smart follow-up to story about a fatal accident in the community. But editors later realized the questions asked were subjective and very hard to quantify and map in a meaningful way. This survey about cultural diets, also done by The Local, was much easier to quantify.

• Multiple Choice:
  • Offer discrete numerical quantities rather than descriptive qualities so that you collect numbers that can be graphed. For example, “How often do you eat out?” Never (0 times); No more than twice a week (1-2 times); Often (3-5 times) / Daily (5-7 times). Avoid: Sometimes; Often; All the time. These are subjective qualities.
  • Make the choices mutually exclusive. In other words, people should not struggle between the choices or have several apply to them.
• Check Lists:
  • Giving people the option of selecting various common items or experiences will make it more likely that people complete the survey.
  • Make sure to give them choice of adding “Other” and a place to enter what “other” is.
• 1 to 5 scale:
  • Allows people to rank their experience, likes and dislikes.
  • Always keep the scales well-balanced. At one end is “Excellent” and at the other end is “Atrocious.”
  • Space your adjectives evenly. In other words, the choices should represent a complete spectrum and not leave gaping holes. For example, you should avoid: “Loved the event / Had a good time / Hated being there!” There are several degrees missing between “Had a good time” and “Hated being there” that could provide useful data.
• Yes and No:
  • As in all forms of journalistic interviews, avoid “Yes” and “No” questions.
  • Caveat: There are some good uses of the Yes/No question in a survey. After you collect some background information or context, you may ask a Yes/No question to categorize each respondent and then lead them into a separate branch of the survey.
• Private Info:
  • Remember to ask for a name and contact info. You’ll need this to verify or follow-up.
  • Inform people that you will NOT be sharing or publicizing the data in any way.
  • Use a Text box to collect this data.
• Open-ended:
  • You provide a longer text box to capture people’s experiences and perceptions.
  • Limit this to one or two MAX per survey. Too many open-ended questions can turn off respondents and limit your ability to chart or graph results because the answers often are not quantitative.
  • An optional, open-ended question or two at the close of a survey can sometimes yield great material to be used as anecdotes  or quotes.

Order of the questions

• Provide a variety of question formats to keep them interested filling out the survey
• Using the same format question after question can result in people answering without much thought.
• Make them flow in a logical order.
• Perhaps one question answers a question generally, while the next asks for specifics.

Presenting the Findings:

• Just collecting the data makes the page appear static. Instead, consider presenting the raw data in real-time as people fill out the survey. Seeing results encourages participation.
• Or entice participation by saying respondents will be taken to results page once the survey is completed.
• Is there an end-date on the survey or will you continue to accept responses. A deadline might encourage participation but it might also be irrelevant.
• Crowdsourcing v. Open-Source: Will you share the data in a format that others can analyze and manipulate?
• Is this a one-way experience. They give, you take? Or can the data provide a service to those who took the survey? Can they use that info to make any informed decision?

Final Touches:

• Keep questions simple. People should have to figure out what you are asking them!
• Make sure you are not passing judgment. You want to find out what your audience thinks. The survey is not your soap-box.
• Have a friend or colleague take the survey:
  • How long did it take them?
  • Were they confused about the any of the questions?
  • Are you missing an important element?
  • Is there a stronger logical order to ask the questions?
  • Were they interested or bored?
• Once you publish it and have some results you can’t change it. So get it right!
• Search Engine Optimized Title: Write a strong SEO headline that draws an audience.
• Compelling Precede: Write a strong intro that entices people to participate.
• Provide a time estimate: “This survey will take no more than 5 minutes to fill out.”
• Remind your audience that this is not a scientific survey based on population sampling.
• Who ever has the link can participate and those who don’t have the technology can’t.

I’ve learned quite a bit since starting Sunset Park Chronicled six months ago. Certain questions that plague the startup entrepreneurial journalist or blogger were easy to answer. It was a “hyperlocal” blog, so I had an audience—the neighborhood. Few news outlets cover this part of Brooklyn, and there is demand for news. And I knew my subject well. It is my “beat” at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Getting a blog up and running is easy as well. I started with WordPress.com, which is free, and offers good looking, flexible templates.

Then comes the learning curve and the growing pains. As an individual trying to cover a large and complex community, I don’t have the luxury of taking off one hat and putting on another. I wear them all at once–I aggregate news and I write it. I fix funky links and embed video. On occasion, I editorialize.

I do it imperfectly. Nobody really knows what the news landscape will look like in ten years, or even tomorrow. We do know it’s changing. Anyone can make news, and report it. This is what I have learned:

• Be consistent. Whether weekly, twice a week, or every day, make sure to set a blogging schedule and keep to it. Remember that morning paper that once landed on your doorstep? People like to know they can find something new when they go to your site and these days, people are hungry for as many updates as you can serve up. While a flurry of updates is always nice, consistency and quality pay off in the long run.
• Take a picture. Or a video. Or make a map. Try to create an interactive environment. Get people involved, even if only through watching and clicking.
• Use tags and pingbacks. Tag those posts like the A-train in the ‘80s. Tags help direct traffic. People still fish for news erratically, and you want to catch them in your net.
• Learn search engine optimization. Painful as it is, clever headlines are quickly becoming a thing of the past. You have to put key terms in the headline—like the tags, it helps put you on the radar of Google, Bing and the like. Save your quips for the lede.
• Talk to people. Respond to your readers. Ask questions. Engage thoughtfully with critics to create good dialogue, but don’t get defensive. And don’t take things personally. Doing so tends to take everyone off topic.
• Make a comments policy, and stick to it. You need to figure out what you are willing to put up there. My policy was to  write back to commenters asking them to remove offensive language, but I chose not to do it myself. If they’re not willing to reword their comment to get the idea up there, then it was likely a fleeting thing.
• Use the blog for story ideas. I have learned a lot from writing back to commenters asking them for more. Some speak on the record, some off. Some don’t respond at all, but you never know what you will find until you reach out.
• Shameless blog promotion. A news blog provides a service, an articulation of goings-on and issues, but it can’t work properly if no one’s reading it. Use Twitter. Tell people about the blog in person (gasp!). Then let the viral nature of word of mouth do its work.
• Use your analytics, but not too much. As an editor/publisher/marketer, stats are key. You can get a sense of who is looking and when, and what they want to read and like to look at. I originally used the data embedded into wordpress.com. Now I use Google Analytics, which offers a wealth of information, some of it still opaque to me. That said, there are stories, good stories, important stories that will never get the traffic that a cute cat video on YouTube pulls in an hour. That’s okay. Cute cat coverage does not a good reporter make.
• Be transparent. Don’t pretend you are something you are not. You are helping people understand their environment better. Let them see who’s talking.
• Link. For the love of god, link. Show people where you get your information. You are an educator as much as a reporter. Help them see how the job is done. You’ll build trust and credibility, hot commodities in our information age.
• Use your resources. One of my favorites is Google Alerts. It keeps me abreast of news and blogs, and offers story ideas. Twitter works too. And there is, of course, nothing like shoe leather reporting. It’s the best part anyway.
• Do your best. Life is busy. The news is fast. Blogging is a huge responsibility. Learn how to balance it all to keep quality high, readers interested and stay sane. Technical issues can be fixed, typos corrected, but a stain on your journalistic credibility is harder to clean up.