Surveys are a useful way to gauge the opinions of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's (EERE's) target audiences.
Why Use Surveys?
Surveys can help you answer questions such as:
- Who is using the product or service?
- What are they trying to accomplish with the product or service?
- How satisfied are they with the product or service?
- How can we improve the product or service?
Survey Approvals
If your survey or UX research project collects information from 10 or more persons, contact your program counsel, or for matters related to financial assistance, Christopher Calamita, to determine whether an approval is required under the Paperwork Reduction Act.
Planning Your Survey
- What is the purpose of my survey? Understanding what you hope to get out of your survey will help you choose the right questions.
- How long does it need to be? We recommend limiting your survey to 15 questions or less to improve completion rates.
- How long should I run it? Typically, we run our qualitative surveys until the answer percentages for key questions begin to stabilize (often three to six weeks).
- How will I advertise it? Often, we advertise our surveys via our website and/or through appropriate email lists.
Writing Your Survey
When writing survey questions, follow these best practices:
- Ask simple questions using clear language.
- Ask your most important questions first.
- Ask for only the data you really need and will use.
- Ask questions in a format that you can analyze. Open-ended questions can be valuable for explanations, but are hard to analyze; limit the number of open-ended questions to only those you really need.
Personally Identifiable Information
Prior to collecting information, contact your program counsel for additional help in determining the potential applicability of the Privacy Act.
Only collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as email, phone number, or address, if you need it for analysis. Any PII you collect must be stored on a Department of Energy server that has been certified and accredited.
Building Your Survey
Once you have approval, you can code your survey.
EERE typically uses Alchemer (formerly called Survey Gizmo) or Survey Monkey, which collect and aggregate the results of your survey for you automatically.
Contact the Web Governance Team Facilitator if you'd like to have your survey built in Alchemer or Survey Monkey. You will be provided access to the tool to edit your questions and run reports after the data is collected.