Streamline Training & Documentation: Guidelines for Employee Attitude Surveys

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Guidelines for Employee Attitude Surveys

Prompted by an article about employee surveys in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I went back to the files I collected while working with a client on two attitude surveys several years ago. Among the gems I resurrected was a list of guidelines offered by Palmer Morrel-Samuels in "Getting the Truth into Employee Surveys," published in the February 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Morrel-Samuels considers five areas of survey design — content, format, language, measurement, and administration. His article provides a detailed rationale for each of sixteen guidelines:

Content

Ask questions about observable behavior rather than thoughts or motives.

Include some items that can be independently verified.

Measure only behaviors that have a recognized link to company performance.

Format

Keep sections of the survey unlabeled and uninterrupted by page breaks.

Design sections to contain a similar number of items, and questions a similar number of words.

Place questions about respondent demographics last.

Language

Avoid terms that have strong associations in people's minds.

Change the wording in 1/3 of the questions so that the desired answer is negative. (Make sure the questions are easy for survey-takers to interpret correctly.)

Do not merge two disconnected topics in one question.

Measurement

Create a response scale with numbers at regularly spaced intervals and words only at each end.

If possible, use a response scale that asks respondents to estimate a frequency (as opposed to "agree"/"disagree").

Use only one response scale that offers an odd number of options.

Avoid questions that require rankings. (Such questions tend to yield biased results.)

Administration

Make the surveys individually anonymous and demonstrate that they remain so.

In large organizations, make the department the primary unit of analysis. (The department will also generally be the level at which training needs are addressed.)

Make sure that employees can complete the survey in about 20 minutes.

Another outline of principles of survey construction, administration, and interpretation is available as a pdf file here.

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Labels: Employee development, Management practices

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