TEAM Lab staff recently attended the Tobacco Control Evaluation Center’s (TCEC) Developing Effective Surveys 2011 Regional Training this past Tuesday (May 24th, 2011) in Cerritos. Robin Kipke and Travis Satterlund hosted and facilitated a well-organized and very valuable training.
This training was valuable because they shared some very important concepts that can help to facilitate any materials development process. The concepts and resources they shared were End Use Strategizing and the Dillman Principles (Dillman, 2007)*. Of course the focus of this training was how to develop effective surveys; however, the same care and thought that goes into developing a survey must also be used to develop educational materials. Needless to say TEAM Lab was very pleased and we walked away with organization and planning tools that can be used in almost any arena.
End Use Strategizing—A method that uses reverse logic to develop survey questions. When developing surveys most people just start with trying to figure out what questions need to be asked. The very first step of this strategy is to determine the purpose of the data collection. This initial step can make all the difference in developing a relevant, reliable and effective surveys that people will want to complete.
Here are the steps of the End Use Strategy that you need to ask yourself before you even begin developing the survey questions:
- What is the purpose of the data?
- Who will be using this data? (Your project? Your funding agency? Etc.)
- How will the information be used?
- Who will criticize the survey and the data gathered from the survey?
- What is the credibility threshold? How many people need to take the survey in order to obtain persuasive information?
- What kind of data do you pieces of data do you need to collect?
- Who will be taking the survey? (Community members? Politicians? Students? Etc.)
- What types of questions will the survey ask?
To get more details and information regarding this method please visit the TCEC website: http://tobaccoeval.ucdavis.edu/tools.php.
Dillman Principles—These principles come from the book Mail and Internet Surveys: the Tailored Design Method by Don Dillman (2007). It provides approximately 10 guidelines with in-depth descriptions as to how to effectively plan and develop of mail and internet surveys. These guidelines will help to minimize measurement and non-response error.
The 10 Dillman Principles discussed at this training were:
- Keep it simple
- Say what you mean
- It is all about timing
- Balancing Act
- Pick Me!
- Framing the Issue
- Six of One, half dozen of the other
- Are you good at math?
- Don’t be negative?
- Over a barrel
To get more information regarding these resources, you can purchase Dillman’s book or attend one of the Tobacco Control Evaluation Center’s Regional Trainings: Developing Effective Surveys 2011. To find out more information please visit the TCEC website: http://tobaccoeval.ucdavis.edu/regional_training.php.