Effective Guide to Summarize Questionnaire Results

Strong survey questionnaires play an important role in deriving valuable insights from customers and potential users. But collecting meaningful insights from survey data starts with summarizing the raw responses. So, you must know how to summarize a questionnaire.

It’s not always clear how to summarize and interpret such responses right away. There are numerous methods for condensing and presenting quantitative data visually.

This article will walk you through some standard techniques for summarizing survey questionnaires.

Why Establish the Goal of Your Survey Summary?

A survey summary is a report that gives an overview of the survey you conducted. Business leaders analyze these results to decide how to proceed. Summarizing the findings can help you determine the next steps in your business.

The goal of your survey summary should be to concisely summarize the conclusions so that the company may act on the data. The next steps depend on the purpose of your survey.

Providing the context at the beginning of your survey summary will help the reader understand the background and goal of the questionnaire. To ensure that the reader understands how the data was acquired, mention the data collection method you employed in your survey.

person holding a white Samsung Galaxy Tab with graphs and charts on paper.
Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash

How to Summarize a Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a tool that allows clients to gather more information about their target audience.

To provide a clearer, more personalized experience for your customers, it is important to summarize the analysis you have conducted from your data. That is where the following tips could help you.

Let’s look at some common types of questionnaire responses and how to summarize a questionnaire effectively for better insights.

Binary Responses Summary

A binary (also known as dichotomous) response option is one in which there are only two potential answers to a question. The responses could be Yes/No, Agree/Disagree, or Male/Female. The sum of the two options is always 100%. When summarizing the percentage of respondents, the common pie graph is a great choice.

When estimating the percentage of users in your entire population who agreed or disagreed with a specific statement, use confidence intervals around the percentage. Confidence intervals provide you with the most likely range for an unknown population average or percentage.

Rating Scales Summary

Questions with rating scales can specifically ask participants to rate their degree of agreement or satisfaction on a scale. The scale could range from 1 to 10 or any other specified number range. You can also assign numbers to questions with ordered categories.

These rating questions require you to make comparisons and use statistics to understand the results. You need to find the standard deviation, mean, overall response volume for all questions, and more. You can display and compare all the information side by side with error bars.

Single Select Response Summary

Single-select responses are for closed questions when participants are requested to select one option from a range of choices. You can summarize the percentage of people who selected each category. To summarize the responses in the survey, a graph would be sufficient.

However, using bar graphs will be more useful if you want to estimate the frequency of one response in the entire population. It will help you see which response is statistically higher than another.

Different ways to present questionnaire responses

Here are some frequently used methods to present your survey data or questionnaire responses and share important details:

Make Use of a graph or chart

You can effectively visualize data through graphs and charts. Not only are they colorful and visually appealing, but they are also easy on the eyes. They make understanding the data and results much easier. But choosing the right graph to highlight your data appropriately is always important.

Create a data table for numerical information

Too much numerical information is often disorganized and scattered, which makes it hard for decision-makers to figure out what’s worth paying attention to.

Data tables are great for visualizing numerical data and communicating the results of the respondent’s responses. This allows you to draw the audience’s attention instead of having to just stick to read-only text. You can use software like Excel to quickly create data tables.

Combine visual presentations

Sometimes you can create a thorough and in-depth display of your findings through visual presentations. They are great for showcasing all types of data. You might use visual presentations to discuss the preliminary phases of your survey, including the research questions, hypotheses, survey questions, and analytical techniques.

Design a compelling infographic

Infographics may be your best option if you need to present information that is simple to read and can be quickly absorbed. Infographics work very well to condense complicated concepts into clear statements that are more interesting to read than long paragraphs of text.

Conclusion

Summarizing the results of your survey questionnaire is one of the most important things you can do when collecting feedback. This article outlines some key steps and methods to help you summarize a questionnaire easily.

Summarizing data allows you to understand what information resonates with your audience and what you must do to improve your efforts. Make sure to summarize all the information that you take in and use it to make improvements going forward. That way, you’re all set!

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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