Summary: Last month, we talked with Justin Rivers of The Character Connection Initiative and he shared with us a story about a survey his organization undertook in order to measure growth on student outcomes. You can listen to that episode to hear some of the things that went well and not-so-well, but one of our takeaways from that episode is how hard it is to do surveys well! In our work, we're constantly butting up against problems with how to design good questions, how to tailor surveys to the needs and backgrounds of the participants, and how to implement surveys in dynamic and non-controlled environments. (And, also, how to get people to take our darn surveys!) <br> <br> Who better to chat with than Sheila Robinson about all of our questions? Sheila and her colleague, Kim Firth Leonard, recently wrote a book called Designing Quality Survey Questions that, you guessed it, provides sound advice on how to design quality survey questions. We got to chat with Sheila about a few of our most pressing questions, including how balance the tension between creating really well-designed surveys and working within the time and budgetary constraints that many nonprofits have. We also chatted about response shift bias, using pre-validated versus original surveys, surveying hard-to-reach groups, and Rebecca's inability to say the word vignette (that pesky G!). Honestly, we really just scratched the surface. Sheila is a real wealth of knowledge and we're grateful to have had a chance to talk with her.<br> <br> This is our final episode of Season 1! The season finale everyone's been talking about! Rest assured, there are no cliff hangers, only gratitude for everyone who listened to the podcast this season. If you have ideas for future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us via the Contact Us page of our website. We would love to hear your suggestions. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season, if this is when you celebrate your holidays. Check back with us in the spring when we kick off season 2!<br> <br> Until then!
