Audience Surveys Versus Interviews: Which to Use

Use interviews to learn why, and use surveys to learn how many. Interviews are deep and slow with tiny samples. Surveys are shallow and fast with large samples. Neither one replaces the other, and the order matters more than the choice.

Run the interviews first. You cannot write a good survey about a problem you do not yet understand, because you will not know which answers to offer. The interviews hand you the vocabulary and the options. The survey then tells you which of those options the broader audience recognizes.

What each method is good at

An interview surfaces the unexpected. People mention a workaround you never considered, and that single sentence can redirect a whole content plan. A survey cannot surface the unexpected, because every possible answer came from you before anyone responded.

A survey measures distribution. Once you know the five problems people have, a survey tells you which one is most common. That number is what you want when you are deciding which video to make first with limited time.

• Interviews: small samples, deep detail, open answers.
• Surveys: large samples, shallow detail, fixed answers.
• Interviews first to find the options.
• Surveys second to rank the options.

Interviews write the menu. Surveys tell you what most people order.

Designing the survey after the interviews

Turn each repeated problem into one answer choice using the audience's own phrasing. Keep the list short enough to read on a phone, and add an open text field at the end for anything you missed. That field is your next round of interview recruiting.

Ask one question at a time. Bundling two problems into one choice makes the result impossible to read. A short survey people finish beats a long one they abandon halfway.

Key takeaways

• Interviews explain why, surveys measure how many.
• Always run interviews before building the survey.
• Use audience phrasing for every answer choice.
• Leave one open field to catch what you missed.