5 General general guidelines according to Kevin Boone at Middlesex University

1.  Decide what the objectives of the study are. Ensure that you can phrase these objectives as questions or measurements. If you can't, don't start.

2. Decide what to ask in your survey, or what to measure, that will give you answers to the questions you have selected. If the questions prove to be unanswerable, don't start.

3.  Ensure that you know what population you are studying. Pick a sample group that is representative of the population. If you cannot do this, at least try to estimate the effect that this lack of representativeness will have on your final results.

4.  If you can, pick a sample group large enough to give a result with a desired level of confidence or accuracy. If you can't do this, estimate the confidence or accuracy after the survey. If these are lower than you anticipated, make sure you can explain why.

5.  When presenting your results, be careful to distinguish between the factual or numerical results, and your interpretations of the results.

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