No matter how well-designed your questionnaire, it remains critically important that skilled research professionals, including coders/tabulators and analysts examine survey data and report findings in a clear and logical manner.

CSSL recommends involvement of a specialized clerical staff for coding and tabulation of survey data.  These individuals should be well trained in particulars of each project (including main issues and important terminology) and should have a good understanding of all questions, especially open-ended questions.    

Analysts should have a good understanding of statistics, especially the concept of statistical significance, and they must be skilled writers.

Most clients prefer in-depth reports of findings.  Others ask for shorter reports focusing only on problems and challenges.

We include below some parts of a sample report prepared by CSSL.  Note that we would be pleased to send a full sample report to prospective clients as part of a comprehensive proposal.

Note: We have changed all identifying information, strategic findings, and numbers in the following portion of the sample report.

I.  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF FINDINGS.

CSSL recently completed the third annual survey of XYZ Company’s customers.

Our major findings and impressions, based on our overall experience with the survey and on comparisons with the previous surveys, may be summarized as follows:

II.  INTRODUCTION & METHODOLOGY.

CSSL has completed the second annual survey of XYZ Company’s customers.

For the survey we have just completed, we designed a research instrument (questionnaire) with considerable input from XYZ Company management. This comprised many questions we had asked in previous years and some new questions. For this year's survey, XYZ Company provided us 582 contact names at many different organizations, representing differing job functions. Contrast this with last year’s total, 715 contact names, which included a number of "lower priority" customers.

Contacts ranged from high-ranking executives to program managers, contract administrators, technical people, and others.  We completed 325 interviews, some with referrals or replacements for retired or transferred personnel. See Table 5 for a list analysis [not included in this sample report].

Once we had secured XYZ Company’s approval on the questionnaire, we went to work on the field portion of the research project. TAI personnel conducted telephone interviews with XYZ Company’s customers. To assist the process, XYZ Company mailed selected customers a letter of introduction. 

[More detail on methodology included in full sample report.]

III.  DETAILED REPORT OF FINDINGS.

[Full sample report available to prospective clients as part of comprehensive proposal.]

IV.  ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS.

In most reports prepared by CSSL, we include detailed action recommendations based on survey findings. Typically, these focus on suggested client actions in the marketplace designed to enhance share and improve profitability.

[Selected illustrative charts and graphs for this sample report begin below.  Note that they have been reduced in size so lack some clarity.  Scroll down to see all four.]