Survey

A few weeks ago I carried out a survey entitled 'The Effectiveness Of Your Training' and this blog aims to analyse the effectiveness of that survey.

When I created the survey my intention was to discover how well people felt their training had prepared them for their career and particularly what aspects they felt were most beneficial or lacking. I also wanted to investigate what people saw as important measures of success.

I initially posted my survey (created using Survey Monkey) on my blog and I got a reasonable response of about ten people from the BAPP course but I felt I wanted more people involved so I decided to also post the survey onto Facebook. I didn't ask anyone specifically to fill in the survey I just left it on my wall but the response number significantly increased to thirty four by the end of the survey period. I would definitely use Facebook again as a way of getting any future surveys to the maximum number of people. It would be possible to use contacts on Facebook to post the survey on their walls too so that people beyond your direct network could respond. Obviously the more people that respond to the survey the more relevant and accurate the information becomes. I understand the argument that this rules out anyone who doesn't have a Facebook account or a computer but I still feel I would be able to get enough of a cross section of the populations that I am interested in to make the method worthwhile and fair.

I would also use Survey Monkey to create any future survey because I felt it was easy to use and the graphs it creates are really useful in giving a visual overview of particular trends of thought. I would however consider paying the fee to create a survey that was slightly longer as I felt restricted by the limit of ten questions.

When I first created my survey I was aware of the ten question limit and tried particularly hard to only include questions that I thought would help me find out what I wanted to know. After looking at my results however I still created several questions that were completely pointless. The question 'Where did you train?', although interesting, gave me no specifically useful information. Also the question 'Are you currently working or have you ever work in the field you trained in?' was not useful. 97.1% (33) of respondents were working or had at some point worked in their chosen field so from this I could read that the training of most people was successful because it enabled them to work. The question however gave no insight into the type, length or regularity of work.

There is one other question that I would not ask again an that is the name of the respondents. Carly Osbourne and Ellie Sykes both commented that they thought respondents were more likely to be honest and forthcoming with their answers if they were anonymous. I absolutely agree with them. I think for the pilot survey it was fine to ask for names because we are comfortable with each other and it gave me the opportunity to follow up any queries I had. If I were doing a larger survey in future involving people who I did not know and who did not know me I would give up the chance of being able to follow up for the increased possibility of truthful responses.

Something interesting that emerged from the survey is that 64.7% (22) of respondents were only partially happy with the training they received and 2.9% (1) not at all happy. This has made me keen to continue with my inquiry into vocational training to see what it is that performers feel they actually need that they are not currently getting. Again, however, I feel I could have worded this question better. I asked, 'How well do you feel your vocational training prepared you for your chosen career: Not at all, Partially, Completely?' 32.4% (11) of respondents said they were completely happy with their training but when asked if they felt if anything could have done anything to prepare them better they all gave an answer. This made me think that perhaps they were not 'completely' happy meaning I should have given them a different option, such as 'very well'.

When asked what they felt (if anything) their college could have done to prepare them better 17.6 % (6) of respondents thought that audition technique could have been improved, 17.6% (6) of respondents felt that more information on self-employed business issues (i.e. tax and marketing) should have been given, and 20.6% (7) felt that the acting training could have been improved. These insights have made me want to ask specific questions around these particular issues.

When asked what aspect of their course (if anything) they felt was vital for their training 35.3% (12) thought that the discipline of the course was vital.

When asked to rate the importance of certain factors in determining how successful a performer is, quality of work and happiness came out marginally higher as the most important factors. If I were to ask this question again I would ask the respondents to rate them in order of importance. I think this would give a much clearer indication of what people think is the most important factor in determining success.

With regards to my pilot survey one of the things I found most beneficial was the mix of quantitative and qualitative information. It was useful to ask a quantitative question and then give people room to expand their answer, enabling me to find out why they thought certain things. Any survey I do in the future will definitely contain a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions.

I found the survey process really interesting and will be using it in my actual inquiry because it is a way of getting information quickly from a large pool of people. However, this piloting process has made me appreciate the importance of getting the questions right. They need to be clear (making sure they mean the same thing to everybody) and specific (making sure they are aimed at collecting the information you actually want to collect). The next time I carry out a survey I will spend much longer on working out exactly what it is that I want to know.