how can you improve the reliability of your results

For example, phrasing a question like “How often are you frustrated with the quality of your internet service?” leads people to negative emotions they may not experience with a more neutral question, like “How do you feel about the quality of your internet service?” All it takes is one or two words to completely change the bias of a given question, compromising your results. If you’re the one writing your customer surveys, you can bet at least some of your questions are inherently biased, which can skew your results in a misleading direction. Most businesses won’t have the budget to follow strict scientific standards when launching a survey, but there’s a budget-friendly middle ground that most companies end up ignoring. You also have to consider what type of sampling to employ (e.g., random sampling, weighted sampling, etc.) and which techniques you should use to generate those samples.

Larger samples can help increase the accuracy of your results to an extent (for example, surveying 10,000 people is likely to get you closer to the truth than surveying 100 people), but simply going bigger isn’t enough. Sampling is the process of using a small group of participants to create an accurate interpretation of a wider group, and it plays a massive role in the reliability of your results. First, you need to think about how you’re sampling - a key element some companies don’t even consider.

How can you improve the reliability of your results