Back to the Basics - Conducting a Successful Readership Survey, by Lewis Copulsky, Lewis&Clark
A version of this article appeared in Signature magazine, March 2010

1. Keep it clear and concise. Your last readership survey was conducted five years ago and now you finally have the time and budget to conduct a new one. You've have ten pages of questions you want answered and your advertising director has another five pages.

Unfortunately, you'll need to do some serious editing if you want anyone to complete the survey. Ideally, your survey should take from 10 to 15 minutes to finish. Beyond that, you'll find readers either rushing through it without giving any thought to their answers, or giving up completely.

Not only do you need to limit the length of the questionnaire, but also make sure your questions are clear — time spent puzzling over what you're asking is time not spent thinking about the answer. In addition, answer choices need to be clear, and they need to cover all possibilities.

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