The Six Stages of Survey Projects

Surveys go through six main stages:

	Business Issue / Needs Analysis
	What are you trying to understand, change or decide—and how will a survey contribute?
	Questionnaire Development
	Translating the business issue to a reasonable number of questions and the best data scales. More...
	Survey Distribution
	Distributing paper surveys or launching Web forms. More...
	Data Handling
	Both data collection, such as from scannable or keypunched surveys, and also data cleaning to check for invalid responses or code comments for reports. More...
	Reporting & Analysis
	Crunching the data in tables or graphs, as well as breaking down results for different time periods, divisions, demographics, etc. More...
	Business Recommendations
	Returning to stage one, making the decision or determining changes to make in your organization.

I specialize in survey methodology for a wide range of projects, primarily through stages 2 to 5. Sometimes projects span all those steps, but often clients are looking for help with just one or two pieces. I also do recovery work when projects hit a snag.