This document discusses using qualifiers in surveys to target the ideal participants. It recommends: 1) Knowing your target audience and confirming you have the right participants through qualifying questions at the start of the survey. 2) Using qualifying questions to narrow the field to only those who can provide relevant responses. These may include releases, waivers or agreements to participate. 3) With survey tools like SoGoSurvey, it is easy to set up qualifying questions and branching logic to filter participants and guide only relevant respondents through the full survey.

1. Qualifiers: The Logical Way to
Capture Your Ideal Survey Participants

2. • Everyone wants higher survey
response rates — piles and piles of
data — but nobody wants bad data.
• It’s totally possible to collect
responses from the right people and
to ask only the right questions to
those individuals.
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3. Know Your Audience

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• While some of SoGoSurvey's clients
are interested in collecting feedback
from a wide audience, many of them
have a very specific group in mind.
• Perhaps it’s as simple as “employees
in this company” or “customers who
purchased from us within the last
quarter.”
• If you’re hoping to hear from
specific groups and you don’t have
an audience in mind, hoping may
not be the best strategy.
• Working with survey panel
services providers can be a good
solution.

5. The Qualifying Round

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• Once you have the right audience, it’s
often a good idea to confirm.
• Again, if you’re just looking for any
feedback you can get, stop here.
• In a survey, the qualifiers are the
questions you ask to narrow the
playing field until you have only the
right players who can deliver results.

7. Releases, Waivers, and Agreements

8. • In some cases, the only thing that you
need as a qualifier is an affirmative
agreement up front, such as a waiver
or a release.
• There are some good reasons to
request approval or confirmation up
front. We'll look at two of those
reasons next.
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9. www.SoGoSurvey.com
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• Depending on IRB (Institutional
Review Board) guidelines and/or the
policies and practices of your field, it
may be necessary for you to provide
an informed consent form before
asking even a single research
question.
Dissertation/Thesis/
Academic Research

10. www.SoGoSurvey.com
• If you’re sharing feedback with an
organization, you’ll often see or
hear questions about how they’d
like to use your comments.
Market Research
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11. Branch Out With Logic

12. • With SoGoSurvey, it’s easy to set up both the
qualifying content up front and to seamlessly
move the “yes” group forward while politely
excusing the “no” group from the rest of the
conversation.
• Because we have an amazing User Guide, we
don’t need to go into every detail here, but
the basics:
• Provide the important terms and guidelines
on the first page.
• Add a clear qualifying question. Set this
question as mandatory.
• Decide: What should happen next if people
click No?
• Set up single-question branching to define
the path forward based on your decision
question.
• Test and confirm it’s working as you
expect.
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15. Thank you!