6 Types Of Survey Designs

Creating surveys can be a way to get honest and clear responses from people on target with the topic. In addition to being a fun and engaging medium for users, it is also a low-cost marketing strategy, unlike traditional market research. After you have all the answers from the surveys, you need to find a way to get your co-workers or employees to visualize the data, quickly and easily.

And that’s where survey design comes in, a chart designed and colored to illustrate all the important data. But how exactly does survey design work?

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What Is Survey Design For

There is no one-size-fits-all survey design; there are different templates that you can customize with colors and wording. Using charts effectively is important to produce professional reports that are in line with the project. Obviously, some charts may be more complex because there is more data to illustrate, but if an attractive design is used the end result is better. Data analysis for some people can be tedious, so a simple visualization can be ideal.

With colorful charts, it is easier to keep the attention of those who are viewing them, instead of showing a black-and-white document full of writing. But it’s not just about pretty graphics. The design must be chosen based on how many categories you want to compare, whether they are mutually exclusive or not. There are several variables to examine before selecting the correct graphic.

Before deciding which chart you want to focus on for your survey, you need to have in mind what results you want to achieve. Do you want a single response? Do you want to make a comparison between two categories? Or do you want to do a fairly broad survey that encompasses several variables? Let’s see what charts are most commonly used and what types of surveys you should use them for: click here to design a survey.

1. Pie Chart

Among the most commonly used graphs for surveys is the pie chart, which breaks down different areas in one circle, showing smaller and larger ones. The visual impact is really strong; you can immediately perceive which “slices of the pie” are larger and which are less important. Different colors can be used for better visualization. The pie chart is mostly used when you want to show clear differences within groups on one dimension. This chart is very useful but should only be used when there are categories that together represent a whole.

2. Scatter Chart

The scatter chart consists of placing different items relative to an average value in lines representing different dimensions. This makes it possible to compare variables very easily and quickly. It can be ideal for making a comparison between gross and net price, deriving the difference between two or more objects with respect to the average, which must be drawn in the graph. This type of graph can either use a single color and several shapes, or multiple colors and a single shape, depending on preference.

3. Vertical Bar Graph

The vertical bar graph is used in many school books to compare averages and percentages among a number of different groups between 2 and 7. The vertical bars are divided from each other by white spaces to avoid confusion. Usually this type of chart is used to contain mutually exclusive categories, such as cue boxes or multiple-choice questions. This design can be used for surveys in which only one option can be selected.

4. Horizontal Bar Graph

The horizontal bar graph looks a lot like the one that was just mentioned, but it is used to compare averages or percentages between a number of different groups that is 8 or more. This graph is also used for mutually exclusive categories, only it is placed horizontally. The lines can either be of different colors or a single color: if there are many lines it is better to use a single color otherwise, it becomes too confusing with a mix of colors.

5. Line Graph

The best example of the line graph is Google Analytics, the tool that is used to analyze website data. It is used to visualize progress over time, such as increased visits to a site or increased sales. However, not just one variable is always used, but there can be more than one so that they can be compared. The line graph is also useful for illustrating trends over the course of time: you can visually see whether they go down or up and over what period.

6. Histogram

The histogram aesthetically resembles the vertical bar graph, but in this case there are no spaces dividing the bars and a one-dimensional distribution of a sample is represented. Unlike other graphs, here sample distributions can be illustrated on discrete interval dimensions: here the categories are not mutually exclusive. The histogram is used in companies selling airline flights to compare the price of a flight for a given day, where the x-axis represents a continuous scale.