Toolkit: A Guide to Designing Surveys

This toolkit explains how to develop, administer and analyze a market survey for savings products.

Market research is a key component in the process of developing and marketing savings products. One of the most useful tools in market research is the market survey. The toolkit outlines steps essential in a market survey. They include:

• Decide if a survey is the right tool by examining its advantages and disadvantages;
• Select appropriate type of survey from in-person interviews, telephone interviews, mail surveys and internet forms;
• Define universe of the survey, which comprises the whole population to which survey conclusions will apply;
• Define survey sample, which comprises the interviewees;
• Design questionnaire by deciding the scope of information that needs to be obtained, the order of questions and question formats;
• Train staff and administer the questionnaire;
• Use software to process the data.

The survey ends with a report of findings and conclusions. In writing this report, the analyst should include information about the relationship between numbers, use charts and graphs to display data, and draw conclusions from the data obtained through the survey.