[IxDA Discuss] Survey data analysis

[Alok Jain]

Oliver,

I'll start with very basics first..

Typically in such analysis one is trying to find major similarities  
and contrast. If this data is over a period of time you would also be  
looking at trends.

A typical Survey is structured as follows:

1. Screening criteria questions - these questions helps ensure the  
correct audience answers key questions further on
2. Concept Intro - whatever you are trying to test is introduced  
here, typically you'll mix it with something else also to remove bias  
and get a comparative analysis
3. Measure - here is where most likert and other scale questions come  
(ranking, constant sum, staple scale etc..)
4. Addition question - like more info on demographics

With these,you can start create cross tab reports  - essentially you  
put one variable (answer or combination of answers) in rows and other  
on columns to how one impacts other. If you ahve structured your  
survey correctly you would have some independent and some dependent  
variables. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Dependent_and_independent_variables

mostly you plot dependent against independent.

Next thing is to see the key trends, similarities and differences you  
see are significant or not - is it something you'll base your  
decision or not. So you do a statistical significance testing. There  
are simple ones like t-test, z-test, etc.. and more sophisticated  
ones like Hypothesis testing. Just search for these terms  -  
statistical significance testing, t-test, z-test, Chi-square, ANOVA,  
Hypothesis testing, Conjoint Analysis.. these should lead you to good  
reading material on what kind of analysis to conduct.

Here is t-test - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%27s_t-test

I am not familiar with a cheap enough software yet, which could help  
you in all this, might be others in the group are.



On Sep 4, 2007, at 2:46 PM, oliver green wrote:

> I am currently using Excel to analysis a survey - mostly based on  
> likert
> scale. Can anyone recommend a tutorial/books etc that discuss  
> survey data
> analysis? I have found the mean, frequency, percentages etc..but  
> would like
> to know other measures that can be used to analyze the data.
>
> Thanks,
> Oliver
> ________________________________________________________________