Writing Effective Survey Questions

Surveys are a popular community engagement tool to help people understand their stakeholders and quickly assess large populations. Unfortunately, because of their popularity, many people untrained in survey creation administer poorly designed surveys that yield questionable results. This workshop serves to provide best practices to write more effective survey questions. If your background is not in the social sciences but you nonetheless find yourself in the position of crafting surveys, this workshop is for you!

Chris Ellis, PhD, NOAA Office for Coastal Management Chris is a social scientist with NOAAs National Ocean Service, based in Charleston, SC. His training is in environmental sociology, survey design and implementation, recreation and tourism choice behavior, organizational behavioral networks, and social-psychological interaction with the coast. He has extensive experience in working with state and local municipalities to build capacity in coastal conservation, and community resilience. He also has a portfolio of projects that lend technical assistance to the National Weather Service to enhance its social science capacity. Working currently for NOAA, and formerly for both the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, he has gained unique perspectives of how the public and institutions understand, perceive, and use natural resources, particularly in coastal areas. He is an adjunct faculty member at the College of Charleston, where he works with students on an array of human dimensions-based research topics. Chris received his PhD in 2005 from East Carolina University.