How to Create Reports that Lead to Results

Morten Holm Therkildsen

Account Manager, surveyexpert

In SurveyXact, you have access to excellent technical analysis and reporting features.

But how can you use these features to create insightful reports?

Here, we share our fundamental principles for report creation.

Understand the task and your audience

Before starting a report, it's essential to consider who will read and use the report, and for what purpose.

Surveys typically begin with someone having specific needs. How a report should be structured and what it should include depends entirely on the answers to these three questions:

Who Will Read and Use the Report?

Is it for a small or large audience, and is it for management or more operational users?

If it's for a few users you know well, you might create a more nuanced report than if it's for a broader audience, where you need to ensure everyone can understand it despite varying backgrounds.

What Will they Use it For?

Go beyond answering, "they need insights."

Do they need strategic insights, tools to drive specific, perhaps local, changes, or is it meant to serve as a reference guide?

What Are their Competencies?

Are users experienced in utilizing survey results, or is it new to them? Do they understand statistics well, or should most of it be explained from scratch? And how familiar are they with the topic of the survey?

If they're well-versed, the report may require less background information. Once you’ve identified who will use the report, for what, and their existing knowledge, try to "put yourself in their shoes" and tailor the report accordingly.

Format

A common question early in the reporting phase is what format to present the results in. In SurveyXact, there are two main formats for reporting – the traditional report and the so-called dashboard.

Technically, both formats function similarly, as they can include many of the same elements and always pull updated data from the survey. Often, the choice between them is a matter of preference, but there are some functional and interface differences that guide which one to use:

REPORTS are typically best for:

Telling a story with a clear beginning and end
No or minimal need for readers to make “choices” in the report
Reports that need to be printed or exported (PDF, Word, PPT, etc.)
Completed surveys

DASHBOARDS are typically best for:

Providing an overview and serving as a reference guide
eaders needing to make choices, such as filtering and navigating
Reports primarily viewed and used online
Ongoing surveys with results that are regularly or continuously updated

Include the Necessary Information—No More, No Less

Avoid data overload.

Presenting too much data can overwhelm the reader, making it hard to identify the most interesting and important results. Survey findings can often be presented in various ways, with differing levels of detail.

In this maze of presentation options, a key question is how detailed the report should be.

The general answer is: detailed enough to intuitively communicate what a chart or analysis is attempting to answer. Some people believe "the more, the better," but we disagree. In fact, the simpler you can present something, the easier it is to convey the message. But again, this depends on the reader and the purpose.

Frequency vs. Average

A common example is how to present results from questions answered using a scale, such as a 5-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree, or from very satisfied to very dissatisfied.

Showing the percentage for all five response categories is called a frequency distribution. If you instead condense it into an average, you reduce the number of figures from 5 to 1.

The same applies if you display it as an index of 0-100 or simply show the percentage of respondents who selected, for example, 4 or 5 (typically the two most positive responses).

What is most appropriate depends, as mentioned, on the reader and the purpose, but a rule of thumb is that if you're presenting differences between groups, it’s generally better to reduce the level of detail.

The point of breaking data down is to reveal differences and patterns across respondent groups, and these should be easy to spot.

Remember the Data Minimization Principle!

GDPR rules state that the data we process about respondents must be absolutely necessary to fulfill the purpose of the survey. Avoid “nice to know” information and stick to “need to know.”

A Clear and Logical Structure

A report that looks professional and well-organized appears more credible. What constitutes a suitable structure and order depends on the report’s purpose:

Strategic insights?
Tools to drive specific changes?
Reference material?
Does the survey follow a model?
What should be in the main section, and what belongs in appendices?

SurveyXact provides useful tools to help structure your report, such as a table of contents, headings, page numbers, and page breaks.

Layout and Design

Adopt a visual mindset; our brains process images and figures faster than text.

Things to consider:

We read from left to right and top to bottom
Be consistent throughout the report
Font and font size
Placement of elements
Use of color
Assess readability for each chart, page, and report/dashboard

When Should You Use Which Colors?

Some general principles:

If the same type of data is shown, use one color for all similar bars and charts.
If using colors to convey different types of data, be consistent.
If blue represents 2023 and yellow represents 2022, maintain this throughout the report.

Use your company's or SurveyXact's color palettes – colors have intuitive meanings, so take advantage of them!

Green represents something positive, growth/increase
Yellow is something neutral or in-between
Red is something negative, decline, or something warm
Blue is something cold
Faint colors represent weak/small elements
Strong colors represent strong/large elements
Ensure sufficient contrast between categories

Morten Holm Therkildsen

Surveyekspert

Account Manager

Xact By Rambøll

M +45 51 61 78 23

mtht@ramboll.com

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