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Unleash the full potential of Fordham’s Qualtrics to make your surveys more effective. This guide will walk you through key strategies for building efficient surveys, provide a recording of the workshop, and share Fordham’s Qualtrics resources and dedicated support, ensuring you have everything you need to create, deploy, and analyze surveys with ease.
Fordham offers all Faculty/Staff/Students access to our campus-wide Qualtrics survey software. Access this software by going to: Fordham.Qualtrics.com
Defining Your Survey Goal 
Crafting a successful survey starts with having a clear, actionable goal. Before you dive into writing your questions, take a step back and define what data (qualitative and quantitative) would make your survey a success. A well-defined goal will guide your question development and ensure you gather the information that will allow you to draw valid conclusions and then make informed decisions.
- Know why you’re asking questions before you write them.
- Set a clear, achievable and relevant goal for your survey.
- Aim to craft questions that will give you actionable data.
Keeping it Short and Focused As we all know, attention spans are short and only getting shorter. This fact holds particularly true for survey participants – who we ask to ‘donate’ their time as well as thoughts/opinions/data with us. If you want to get valuable responses, you need to keep your survey concise and to the point. Here are a few tips on how to streamline your survey, ensuring you get the data you need without overwhelming your respondents.
- Respondents are busy; keep your survey concise and to the point.
- Every question should directly contribute to your survey goals.
- Draft precise questions using simple language.
- Organize your questions logically and always aim to reduce the survey completion time.
Writing Effective Survey QuestionsThe quality of your survey questions directly impacts the quality of your data. Vague or poorly worded questions can lead to confusion and inaccurate responses. Here are a few suggestions on how to write clear, concise, and effective survey questions that get to the heart of what you want to know.
- Avoid vague or leading questions that bias responses.
- Use a mix of question types (multiple choice, scales) for richer data.
- Ask one question at a time and avoid double-barreled questions.
- Rephrase yes/no questions when possible to get more detailed answers.
Using Qualtrics
In this recording Shawn Hill, Instructional Technologist of Educational Technologies, will show you how to harness the power of Qualtrics to create, deploy, and analyze surveys using this powerful survey tool.
Resources and Support
Tutorials, webinars and help documentation are available from Qualtrics as part of Qualtrics University.
Fordham’s campus-wide Qualtrics license includes both email and phone support. If you have questions about how to use Qualtrics or experience technical difficulties, please contact Qualtrics directly by calling 1(800) 340-9194 (recommended) or emailing support@qualtrics.com. Help is available 24/7 via Qualtrics.
If you need assistance logging in, sharing surveys, creating and managing groups, or changing survey ownership, please contact the IT Service Desk.
Looking for assistance in integrating educational technology into your classroom? Visit the EdTech website for resources or reach out to our team!
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