Almost every event is organized to achieve a certain goal. It’s impossible to know whether the goal was fulfilled if no feedback is obtained from those who attend the event. Questions for post-event surveys should be prepared for all sorts of events, including conferences, training courses, and public events.
With this intention, choose your post-event survey questions carefully because you want to keep your post-event evaluation survey brief, ask the right questions at the right time and in the right manner, and collect responses from at least 5-8 individuals to get the most valuable feedback.
If you’re wondering why you should perform a post-event survey, we’ve identified several benefits for you.
Advantages of conducting a post-event survey
- To gauge the overall success of the events from the attendees. This allows participants to provide feedback on the event’s efficacy on a variety of fronts. Individual speakers, seminar subjects, training sessions, product demos, exhibitors, and sponsors can all receive input, as well as comments on parts of online events.
- For upcoming events, improve your event strategy. The data that you obtain from the post-event survey might throw light on a slew of issues that need to be addressed. This helps you better prepare for forthcoming events and enhance your performance in the future. We’ll teach you how to handle the feedback data below.
What types of questions should you include in a post-event survey?
There are many different types of questions to ask from your attendees depending on the type of information you want to get.
Closed-ended questions
Any question for which a researcher provides study participants with several options from which to choose an answer is referred to as a closed-ended question.
Closed-ended questions are those that only elicit a “yes” or “no” response or have predetermined responses.
When should you use close-ended questions?
- Questions that need a simple yes/no response with no more explanation. You can always follow some questions with an open-ended follow-up question.
- Questions in which you must rate the performance of a certain element
Open-ended Questions
An open-ended question cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” or a fixed solution. Therefore, when you create your Open-ended inquiries, make sure they are worded in the form of a statement that will require s a more detailed response. As a result, the response you get can be compared to information that the questioner already has. Open-ended questions, while more difficult to evaluate in bulk, can give useful qualitative feedback.
When should you use open-ended questions?
- When you need a different set of options. Attendees will be able to submit their unique responses to open-ended survey questions.
- You’ll learn something unexpected. With open-ended inquiries, you can obtain responses you didn’t expect and hence don’t have to stick to your assumptions.
Methods/tools for conducting post-event surveys
Things to consider when choosing a survey tool:
- Multiple question types – you’d want a tool that has multiple options and does not limit the type of questions you ask your respondents
- Library of survey templates – Some survey tools offer survey templates you can customize. Why waste time creating all surveys from scratch when you can choose a website survey tool that offers a library of predefined templates?
- Integrations with tools you already use – if you already use other tools such in your office It might be better for you to pick a survey tool that integrates with your office tool for easy transfer of data.
- Export of data to a preferred format – Pick a tool where you can export data to the data format that you work with. If you want to analyze your data in a program like Excel. Download in .csv format is a standard, .xls is less popular but easier to work with if you’re not a spreadsheet maestro)
- Value for money – look at the budget allocated and choose a tool that offers the most features for that price. As a matter of fact, most tools have an option for annual payment but if this is a one-time survey – a monthly payment is recommended.
- Check what existing customers say – every tool has its disadvantages, it may be good to check social media as well to see what past customers say about that tool. Past reviews may give you some insight.
Once you have prepared your survey questions here is a list of survey tools you can use to conduct your post-event survey. This article goes into more detail about each tool
7 best UX survey tools:
- UXtweak
- Survey Monkey
- Alchemer
- Typeform
- Qualaroo
- Survey Sparrow
- Google Forms
Questions to avoid in your post-event survey
When planning to conduct your post-event survey, everything could go according to plan, but several things could hinder you from succeeding. Here are some things to avoid.
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Wrongly ordered questions
Arrange your questions in a way that encourages people to reply to them. Start with the simpler questions and work your way up to the more difficult ones afterward.
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Don’t ask leading and loaded questions
Your questions should never be phrased in such a way that the reader is swayed to one side of the debate. Thus, avoid sentences that sound persuasive or leading by using language that is as neutral as possible.
E.g How much did you enjoy this event? Instead, ask Did you enjoy the event? -
Be clear by speaking your respondent’s language
Avoid using acronyms, technical terminology, or jargon that may cause your audience to become confused. If you must include complicated terms, provide definitions or examples. Thus, you may be confident that practically anyone can readily answer your questions, and that they will be more likely to finish your survey as a result.
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Missing listing
If you’re using multiple-choice questions, make sure you’ve covered all possible scenarios t no user answers are left out. Always leave room for users to fill in any gaps you may have overlooked.
Example: Asking what is your gender and including male and female options only. This will exclude many people that don’t identify as such. -
Double-barreled questions
The most preferred way is to conduct short and simple survey questionnaires. However, make sure you do not cram several questions into one survey item.
You can also ask questions such as, was the event well-organized, and did it live up to your expectations?
Ask two questions instead: Did the event meet your expectations? And how about the event structure? Did you like it? -
Forcing attendants to answer
You don’t need to require all your respondents to respond to all of the questions. It is better to include a don’t know or choose not to say option for some topics.
Handling the post-event survey results
What is the plan now when you’ve finished your post-event survey and received some feedback. What is going to happen next? For the obtained data to be useful, you must gain some insights from it. In the steps that follow, we’ll show you how to examine your post-event survey data.
- Clean up your information. Begin by eliminating the questions that your respondent did not answer. This indicates that the questions were off the target and irrelevant to your responders, and you don’t want them to have an impact on your final results.
- Segment your respondents. In other words, you can filter your respondents into several demographics based on the type of event and attendance you had, such as men vs. women or employed vs. unemployed. This will greatly help you in comparing responses and obtaining insight into a certain group.
- The next step is to examine the data you’ve gathered to find useful information. UXtweak is a terrific tool for this, and you can use it to conduct your survey. Thus, you can organize all responses from the post-event survey into categories such as location, response time, and more. You will be able to analyze data more easily as a result of this. We have another guide that goes over how to analyze survey data in detail.
Tips on conducting your post-event survey
What can you do to improve your chances of success now that you know the benefits of conducting a post-event survey, the questions to ask, the tools to utilize, and how to execute the post-event survey? Below are some more tips to help you get the most out of your post-event survey questions.
- Conduct the survey as soon as the event is over. According to Survey Monkey, respondents are more likely to finish shorter surveys.
- Make the survey tool engaging. Have a range of different questions that attendees will be comfortable filling in.
- Thank the respondents and offer some type of reward for everyone who took part in a survey.
- To better structure, your survey here are tips on creating great qualitative surveys from Nielsen Norman Group.
Now you’re all set to create the ultimate post-event survey!
Whenever you begin the process of designing a post-event survey, it is better to use the pointers provided above as a starting point. With this in mind,
rather than making decisions in the dark, make sure to use the beneficial data you collect in post-event survey questions to push your events toward long-term success. Furthermore, your attendees, event volunteers, presenters, and others will feel recognized and valued, paving the opportunity for longer-term collaborations.
In conclusion, go on and create great post-event survey questions.
