Knowledge is the fuel that runs a successful organization. The success or failure of any organization depends on knowing the attitudes, beliefs, and opinions of its people and also of the people it serves. The best way to determine these is by conducting a survey.

A survey may be called different things, depending on its purpose: a poll, a questionnaire, an opinionnaire, an evaluator, an assessment, an inventory, or a survey. Throughout this document, all of these various forms are referred to as surveys.

A survey is a systematic, scientific, and impartial way of collecting information. For example, you can survey a group (or sample) of people about their feelings, motivations, plans, beliefs, and personal, educational, and financial background. This information is used to generalize conclusions or statements about the larger group (or population) from which the sample is drawn. The intent of the survey is not to describe the particular individuals who take part in a sampling, but to obtain a statistical profile of the population.

Surveys are all around us. They can be used to:

• Measure and improve customers satisfaction levels.
• Discover worker attitudes about issues affecting the work environment, quality, and productivity.
• Quickly evaluate opinions and attitudes.
• Provide data for long-range strategic planning.
• Enhance customer relations.
• Determine specific training needs for an organization.
• Determine the effectiveness of a Help Desk.
• Evaluate internal and external supplier quality
• Increase employee commitment through involvement and implementation of a common mission.
• Evaluate an employee's leadership effectiveness.
• Measure the quality of an education system.
• Evaluate and track Total Quality Team effectiveness.
• Ensure communication among all levels of an organization.
• Determine public perception of political candidates and issues.
• Determine how many and what types of people watch television programs.
• Determine the effectiveness and attractiveness of a web page.
• Evaluate customer satisfaction.
• Gather feedback about a restaurants service and aesthetics.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of care and facilities of a hospital.
• Measur satisfaction, cooperation, and readiness of the military.
• Discover new market possibilities.
• Gauge a lodger's enjoyment of the facilities, room cleanliness, etc.
• Discover opportunities for improvement.

There's no need these days to do the entire survey project by hand. Using a software tool can:

• Help keep the survey project's budget balanced.
• Organize, sort, and filter a list of potential respondents.
• Provide quick entry of respondent lists.
• Provide instant sampling of the audience list.
• Speed up the survey design process.
• Personalize each survey with actual names, addresses, and other information.
• Make distribution of the survey quick with electronic methods such as web page and e-mail.
• Allow quick computerized manual data entry and instant electronic data collection.
• Make the analysis of data seamless with fast calculations of various statistics.
• Create powerful and colorful reports that can be manipulated on the fly.

For your survey to accomplish its objectives it must be well-planned from the start. You should developing an effective plan before you start working on your survey and follow it through.