Scripting conclusions

I've been involved in examining some data returned from a survey. The precise survey isn't important but I wanted to make a note of some good points for future reference when it comes to scripting.

If your doing a large scale survey running to thousands of respondents make sure you so a test run of the survey to pick up any design faults. 100 - 200 responses should be more than adequate. The question which you may think is perfectly logical in your head may in the mind of the public be the perfect prompt to give an answer which is pretty unhelpful.

For instance if you want to find out how often people visit something like the local park don't leave this as an open question. To do so is to create an open goal for respondents to give answers like usually, sometimes or my personal favourite regularly which could mean anything from hourly trips to an annual commemorative visit. Much better would be to use closed answers.

Respondents seemed happy to give their age and gender even if they didn't want to give their name. Number your scripts as you get them back. If your dealing with sensitive subjects it's best not to number them before you give them out as people are less likely to give truthful answers.

Don't ask people what their nationality of origin is. Many 2nd and 3rd generation members of the ethnic minorities will put British or British born which is fine but probably not the answer you want if your trying to find out people's ethnic origins.

Give plenty of options with the most common first particularly if the survey is to be carried out in an area with a wide variety of ethnicity's. There may be important differences between different groups which your study will benefit from recognising. For instance your not Sarah Palin; Africa is not a country but a continent of 53 countries. Recognise this and give a space for an open answer as well as tick boxes for the main ethnic groups you are likely to get given the location of your survey. Also give options for mixed race that go further one box so entitled.

Earlier versions of SPSS don't have the little pop up guide to the variable as your inputting the data. This will cause you pain as you dig around variable view which wont copy and paste and you have to type it all out to the windows notepad. Avoid this shame and upgrade.

Spend more time going through answers before you lump all and sundry into others otherwise others can get pretty big. It may be the best course of action to add further answers to your variable that you hadn't anticipated before you got the survey back but do this before you start inputting data.