In other cases you're going to want to specify who completes the survey. You may also want to control who completes the survey and limit the participants from any particular category or market segment. For example you may want an equal number of male and female respondents, or you may want representation from four or five industries. Identifying the type of people you want to participate for some surveys, such as employee satisfaction surveys, may be easy, but for others, it may be more difficult. We've included some web-based list sources with this document.
Lists are also available from trade magazines and other publications.
There are several approaches to developing a survey guide, but if you're new to this, our advice is to start by constructing the questions that will provide you with the information you need to address the primary objective of the survey. These are the most important questions and you will want to test them for both clarity and function. Basically it comes down to this, the answers to these questions should provide the information needed to achieve the objectives of the survey. This isn't always as easy as it sounds. There have been many professionally designed surveys that have omitted or miss-asked critical questions.