- A decision needs counts, not only stories
- You already know the topics from interviews or support data
- You can reach enough of the right people to trust the split
- You do not know what to ask yet. Interview first
- You need to watch someone use a flow. That is a usability test
- You are about to ship a change and have traffic. That is an A/B test
Steps
Goals and questions sit together. Sampling, pretest, and send are one fielding job. Clean before you analyze.
Goals and questions
Name the decision the survey will inform. Then write questions and audit them for leading wording, mixed scales, and length.
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Survey Question Auditor
Quality-check a draft survey before launch: leading language, double-barreled items, scale mismatches, bias, order effects, and more. Pairs with Survey Question Generator for write-then-audit workflows.
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Research Question Sharpener
Turn a vague or bloated stakeholder question into scorable, method-mapped research questions with prioritization and out-of-scope flags. Use before writing a discussion guide or survey.
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Survey Question Generator
Design effective, unbiased survey questions that yield actionable insights.
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Field the survey
Who, how many, which channel. Cognitive-pretest on a handful of people before the full send. Then launch and remind.
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Survey Fielding Kit
Launch package for a survey: who to send to, quotas and implied send volume, invitation, 3-day and 7-day reminders, thank-you, and channel variants. Not a generic email prompt.
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Survey Cognitive Pretest
Turn a draft survey into a 5-person think-aloud protocol: what to listen for, likely misreads, time estimate, and rewritten items before you field. Use after Survey Question Auditor, before the Fielding Kit.
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Participant Screener Survey Builder
Draft a recruitment screener with intro copy, behavioral and qualifying items, explicit disqualifiers, routing notes, and recruiter guidance. Goes deeper than a high-level recruitment plan.
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Participant Consent & Session Comms
Plain-language consent and logistics: recording, data use, how to stop, incentive, and calendar copy. Variants for interviews, usability tests, surveys, and diaries.
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Clean and analyze
Drop junk and straight-liners, code open ends, then run the analysis. Do not write insights from the raw export.
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Survey Data Quality & Open-End Coder
Before analysis: exclusion rules for speeders, straightliners, and junk; then a codebook for open-ends with example recodes. Hand off a clean file to Survey Analysis Framework. Does not invent statistics.
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Survey Analysis Framework
Analyze survey data to extract design insights, identify patterns, and generate actionable recommendations.
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Research Insight Statement Writer
Turn themes and observations into decision-ready insight statements (Observation, Pattern, Implication, Recommendation) plus a short exec "So What" summary. Use after synthesis or affinity output.
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Report findings
Lead with what the numbers mean for the decision. Charts in the appendix if they help. Do not start with methodology.
Frequently asked questions
How long should the survey be?
Five to ten minutes on a phone. Cut questions that will not change a decision. If you need stories, interview instead of stuffing open boxes at the end.
Do I need a hundred responses?
For a split by segment, yes, around there. For a directional pulse, fewer is fine if you do not treat it like a census. If you cannot reach the right people, do not field it.
We already did interviews. Do we still survey?
Yes, when you need counts on questions you already know. No, if you are still guessing what to ask. That is still a study.