Polls, Surveys and Questionnaires are powerful research tools that can provide valuable information to help with improving internal processes, determining brand favourability and preference, or determining the viability of a potential new product or service to name a few examples. The reason they are so powerful is because they are able to take a sample of people’s thoughts and opinions on any subject, and aggregate these responses to be able to quantify these opinions and extrapolate that data to make more accurate generalizations about the opinions of the general populace. This kind of information is invaluable for making business decisions.
In Canada, it is important not to overlook Quebec’s residents in survey data unless the decisions that are influenced by the results of the survey will not have any sort of effect on them. Even then, getting an extra opinion can help, especially if you are thinking of expanding into the Quebec market. In order to be effective at including French-speaking citizens, there are certain considerations that need to be made and steps that need to be taken.
Defining Your Target Audience
Whose opinions really matter to you? You need to be able to answer this question in order to get answers from the most relevant people. If you sell feminine care products, and want to see if a new product would resonate with your target market, would you really care what a 50-year-old man thinks of it? Probably not.
That is why you should limit who you target with your surveys to get the most relevant data by creating customer profiles. That way you can define your ideal customer and focus on their input while ignoring the rest. Not only does it help you to focus your surveys on relevant people, but it will also help you to determine the kinds of questions your survey should ask.
Create & Flawlessly Translate Your Survey
Once you have defined your target audience, and have an idea of the questions you want to ask them, it becomes time to create the survey. This can be done the old-fashioned way (either by paper surveys sent by mail, or in person interviewing), or online through one of many online survey platforms. In order to include francophone Quebec residents in these polls, every part of the survey will need to be perfectly translated from English to French.
Flaws in the translation can easily alienate the French-speaking people whose input you want, and cause them to simply not send a response. Professional translation services can ensure that no detail is missed and that the translation is perfect.
Don’t Forget Localization
Simply translating the questions from English to French, even if the translation is flawless will likely only yield average response results. If you forget, or simply disregard the fact that there are cultural differences between Quebec and other English-speaking provinces, it will be apparent to savvy and culturally passionate residents of Quebec. The questions will seem out of touch with their daily lives, and subjects of the survey will be less likely to respond. Worse yet, they could respond with intentionally skewed answers that create outliers in your data set that can reduce the accuracy of your data and create more analysis work for you once the survey is complete.
If you aren’t 100% confident that your translation will appropriately adjust the messaging of the survey, then it’s best to trust a professional translator who is proficient in Quebec localization to handle the translation job for you.
Bonus: Get Better Results With Online Surveys
Now that you know how to get the best results when including Quebec residents in your surveys, polls and questionnaires, take things up a notch and improve their survey results overall. No matter what language they are in, online surveys are much more effective than offline surveys. Online surveys provide incredibly powerful advantages over offline surveys such as:
Faster & More Accurate Data Collection
There is no need to wait for paper questionnaires to be mailed back to you, and no need to spend time aggregating all of your responses to get your data. Data is added instantly when responses are submitted and by eliminating the factor of human error when compiling data, you can be sure that the response data is completely accurate.
Reduced Costs
Market research used to be a very costly practice because it required a large team of people to distribute surveys, collect answers, and compile data. This is especially true when dealing with sample sizes in the tens of thousands or more. Online surveys don’t need nearly as much manpower to distribute and since answer collection and data compilation are handled automatically, your business can save massive amounts of money in research costs.
Faster and Easier Data Analysis
With offline surveys, it would take a great deal of time to make sense of a large number of responses as each individual survey response would have to be reviewed and compiled into a data set, and then interpreted in a visual way that is easy to understand. Many online survey tools have the capability to create charts, graphs and tables to visualize your survey data for easy analysis with a few simple clicks.
User Friendliness
On both the business side, and the responder side, online surveys are much easier to work with than offline surveys. Businesses are able to create and distribute surveys much more quickly in an online format, and users are able to respond to surveys more easily, even on their mobile devices. This leads to more effective workflows for the business, and better response rates as well.
More Honest Responses
Market researchers have discovered that online surveys reduce the pressure that responders can feel during a paper, telephone or in-person survey. This allows them to give more honest responses for richer data that drives better business decisions.
Trust 5 Star Translation For Survey Translation & Localization
If you are planning to conduct a poll, survey or questionnaire in Quebec, make sure you have your translations handled by a professional that can help you get the best results so you can make more informed business decisions that can contribute to growth and success. Contact us today to see how we can help!
