5 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Gym Member Survey
Handing out surveys to your gym members is a good way to collect valuable information and improve your fitness center. However, there are
a few common mistakes that can happen when creating a survey:
Creating Question Bias
Question bias refers to questions that are written in a biased manner or forces the respondent to choose the answer the question has hinted towards. These types of questions will not get your facility the results it needs to improve. The more open-ended, opinionate surveys you can offer, the better…but use them strategically. Too many open-ended questions can lead to participants feeling like they’re writing an essay.
Lack of Question Variation
With the lack of question variation in a survey, gym members may feel like they’re repeating themselves. For instance, it’s best to avoid using the same question format, and better to incorporate a few different types, such as:
- Multiple choice
- Open-ended
- True/false
Offering Too Many Questions
Surveys that contain too many questions will often lose the responder’s interest. No one has time to sit down and take a ten minute long survey. Limit each survey to five, easy-to-respond-to questions.
Offering Too Many Surveys for No Foreseeable Reason
Offering too many surveys could cause your gym members to become annoyed and uninterested. They will also become confused if they don’t know what the goal of each survey is. Limit yourself to a few surveys each year and briefly introduce them. In doing so, your gym members will be excited to share their opinions and feedback with you each time a new survey is offered.
Not Allowing Participants Enough Time
Deadlines are great for surveys as it gives your members a window to share their feedback with you. However, not allowing members enough time to respond to the survey is counter-productive. Allow each survey you offer to run for about a week or so before collecting and recording the data. A fair time period will also ensure that members who come to your gym on specific days are included.