Ergo, researchers should also seriously consider giving research participants the option to answer, “Does not apply” in surveys and questionnaires.

Researchers make a big mistake if they do not give respondents the option to answer “Don’t know.”

‘Nuff said.

For example, consider the following sample survey question:

How do you feel about President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize?

• Extremely unexcited
• Somewhat unexcited
• Somewhat excited
• Extremely excited

Unfortunately, writing a question in this manner does not give respondents the opportunity for a neutral response, such as “Neither unexcited or excited.”

This same rule also applies when using numbers as answers to a question. For example, the question above could be modified as follows:

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being high), how excited are you about President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize?

1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     10

The problem with such a numerical scale, or course, is that the “middle ground” is actually 5.5, which is not an option.

A better numerical scale would ask participants to rank their answer on a scale of 0 to 10 or 1-9, where (in both instances) the neutral answer is 5.

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Since many public relations campaigns start first with data gathering and analysis (and if you don’t, you should), I thought it might be appropriate to share the next several thoughts/ideas on ways to improve your primary research.

Primary Research Tip No. 1: Remove Emotion from your Surveys

Although you may begin a research undertaking with a preconceived notion of what your research results will show or prove, you must do all you can do to avoid inserting your own bias into your surveys and questionnaires.

For example, consider this question:

Given that recessions are a terrible time to look for new employment, what is the likelihood that you will begin graduate studies immediately after receiving your bachelor’s degree?

The bias inserted into the previous question is the opening phrase of the question, specifically: “Given that recessions are a terrible time to look for new employment . . .”

In truth, recessions may or may not be a terrible time to look for new employment. An unbiased way of rewriting this question is to simply remove the opening portion of the question so it might now read like this:

What is the likelihood that you will begin graduate studies immediately after receiving your bachelor’s degree?

Remove as much bias as possible from research studies; this is critical to improving the validity of your research results.

Want quick insights into any “public” or target audience? Then conduct a survey.

Such surveys and/or research studies can be as long or as short as you need/want them to be. That’s your call based upon what information you’re trying to gather or insights you’re attempting to gain.

For the record, we recommend both SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang.

Both are quite easy to use, fairly robust, and relatively inexpensive.

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Author’s Note: Five minutes after writing this PR Tip, it dawned on me that taking a survey is very different from conducting a survey. DOH!

Hence, I’ve edited both the headline and the copy above to reflect the fact that what I meant to write was “Conduct a Survey.”