Polls are great tools for getting people to talk, but be sure to remember the following tips for a successful implementation.

Keep your poll concise and relevant.

Know what essential information you need, why you need it, and what you’ll do with it. Don’t ask questions that do not give you the vital information you really need and can use. A question is unnecessary if it is not important enough to report on or won’t make a difference to your organization. The more questions you ask and the less relevant they are, the higher your non- participation rate will be.

Studies show that people don’t like to read large chunks of text on the computer screen and will skip over them. Long or complicated questions will cause you to lose potential participants, so keep your questions short and meaningful to increase your poll completion rate.

Make your poll interesting.

Long, boring questions will lead your participants to scan the poll, answer it incompletely, or quit altogether. On the other hand, interesting questions will keep your respondents reading so they finish the poll.

Select the right question type for the data you need to collect.

If your questions don’t gather the information you’re looking for, they’re useless. Ask specific questions to get specific answers. Say for example you’re putting together the menu for a function. If you ask, "Do you eat chicken? Y or N," and they choose "N," you won’t know if they eat beef or pork or if they’re vegetarian.

Also, be wary of simple yes or no answers unless that is exactly all the information you seek. Yes or no answers usually call for further data from the respondent and you may have to use follow-up questions or comment boxes to get the information you need. Free form answers are difficult to analyze and cannot be graphed automatically, so ask targeted questions to save time.

Know how you will use the information.

How will you analyze the data once you have it? Will you have to graph and present it? Will you have to follow up with certain population groups? What actions will you take based on your findings? Do you need to compare the data with last year’s poll?