Survey Report Writing

How to write a simple survey report

By
Dentisak Dokchandra, Ph.D.
Kasetsart University at Sakon Nakhon Province
 Survey report writing
• This task carries 30 marks.
• Twenty marks are allocated for the written
report.
• Ten marks are for the oral presentation of the
report.

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 What you have to do
1. Decide on what you are interested in finding
out about. For example, you want to know if
the students of English here are satisfied with
the management of the study program or
not. This is nothing but finding out the topic
of your survey.

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 What you have to do
2. Your rationale
When you have decided on the topic, you
need to set out the rationale for conducting the
survey. You can ask yourself such questions as
“Why am I interested in this topic?”, “What do I
want to know about this?”, or “Why is this
survey important?” to help fine-tune the
rationale. You will have to write an introduction
in which the rationale is set out.
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 What you have to do
3. Survey questions
In this part, you need to write “ survey
questions” which determine your survey
objectives . There is no fixed rule for the
number of questions to put. You might ask
one or two questions.

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 What you have to do
4. Your purpose(s)
In this section, you will have to state your
purpose(s) or objective(s) of conducting the
survey. For example, you may state the
purpose(s) as follows:
- To investigate the students’ opinions
towards the management of the Bachelor of
Arts Degree Programme in English at Sakon
Nakhon Province Campus of Kasetsart University
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 What you have to do
5. Method
The method here refers to the way the
survey will be conducted. It includes:
(1) the participants (those who take part in
the survey as informants);
(2) Tools for collecting data (Data collecting
tools) - questionnaire, structured interview,
etc.);
(3) Data analysis (How the data will be
analyzed – qualitatively or quantitatively

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 What you have to do
5. Method (continued)
You may use basic statistics to analyze your
data. The most widely-used basic statistics
include frequency, percentage (%), mean X, and
standard deviation (S.D.)

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 What you have to do
6. Results
After you have analyzed the data, you
present the results. Normally, the results are
presented in tables, and you need to describe
the tables in order to help the readers better
understand what appears in the tables.

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 What you have to do
7. Conclusion
You need to write the conclusion part of
the survey report. The conclusion usually
includes the summary of the method and results
found as well as some implications for, for
example, further research or even for practical
implementation.

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 Example
1. Topic: English Loud Reading Practice by Students
of English at Kasetsart University Chalerm
Phrakiat Sakon Nakhon Province Campus
2. Introduction
English is important not only because it is the
language of international business, aviation,
diplomacy, and education, but also as a lingua
franca. When the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations initiated an economic
cooperation block among themselves known as
AEC (Asean Economic Community), they
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adopted English as their official language, as
clearly stated in Article 34 of ASEAN Charter that
“The working language of ASEAN shall be
English.” (Kirkpatrick, 2012). However, Thailand
as one member of the AEC seems unprepared to
jump on the bandwagon. In this regard, not
many Thai students, especially those who study
English as a major subject, can fluently use it, let
alone those who study it just to pass their
compulsory English courses. The author of the
present report was wondering if those under-
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performing students practice English on their own
when they are outside of class. One assumption is
that students cannot master the language just
because it is merely taught in a classroom. They
need to do more and unceasing self-study or
become independent learners in order to be fluent
in the language.
2. Purposes
The purposes of this survey were to:
1) investigate if the students of English at
Kasetsart University Chalermphrakiat Sakon Nakhon
province Campus do self-study of English
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2. Purposes (continued)
2) to investigate the forms of self-studying
practice of English by the students

3. Survey questions
1. Do students of English at KUCSC do self-
study of English, If yes, how often do they
do?
2. What are the forms of self-study of
English employed by the students of English
at KUCSC?

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4. Method
4.1 Participants
The participants in this survey were 20
second-year regular students of English at
Kasetsart University Chalermphrakiat Sakon
Nakhon Province Campus. They were
conveniently selected from all the English
sophomores who enrolled in the first term of the
academic year 2016 at the campus.

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4. Method
4.2 Data collection tool
The tool for collecting the data in this survey
was a questionnaire. It was a Likert’s close-ended
questionnaire of five rating scales. The
questionnaire comprises 10 items which requests
the respondents to indicate their level of
agreements.
4.3 Procedure
The author distributed the questionnaires
to the selected students who completed and

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Returned them. Then the collected data were
checked for completeness before being analayzed.
The collection of data took place in the first week of
September 2016.
4.3 Data analysis
The data were analyzed by using the Statistical
Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme,
version 21. The statistics used included frequency,
percentage, mean, and standard deviation.
The interpretation of the means is based on
The following criteria:

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Mean range Meaning

0-1.00 = never do
1.01-2.00 = rarely do
2.01-3.00 = sometimes do
3.01-4.00 = often do

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5. Results
5.1 The first survey question asked : Do
students of English at KUCSC do self-study of
English, if yes, how often do they do? The answer
to this question is presented in Table 1 below:

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Table 1 Participants and their self-study (n = 20)

Table 1 shows that most of the participants in this survey were

females while the male ones account only for less than half of the
participants. In terms of the frequency of self-study, it was found

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That many students (50%) frequently did self-study of
English, while some of them (35 %) did self-study almost
every time. Only one student never did self-study and
none of them almost never did the independent study.
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Table 2 Forms of self-study of English (n = 20)
Statements Mean S.D.
1. Watching youtube English videos 3.65 .93
2. Listening to English radio programmes 3.50 1.23
3. Reading English news posts on 3.30 1.26
Facebook
4. Chatting and texting with friends in 2.55 .99
English
5. Practice listening from coursebooks 3.90 .71
and CDs
6. Watching live TV English broadcast 1.80 .41
7. Reading English fiction and magazines 2.15 .58
8. Practicing from online English lessons 3.45 1.23
9. Practicing speaking with native English 1.85 .75
friends/teachers
10. Studying words from standard 2.00 .91
thesauruses
Table 2 shows the forms of self-study the students of English at KUCSC did. It
was found that the students often did self-study by doing the following
activities ranging from the highest to the lowest means:
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Table 2 (Continued)

Table 2 shows the forms of self-study the students of English

at KUCSC did. It was found from the table that the students
often did self-study by doing the following activities ranging
from the highest to the lowest means: practicing listening
from coursebooks and CDs (M = 3.90, S.D. = .71), watching
Youtube English videos (M = 3.65, S.D. = .93), listening to
English radio programmes (M. = 3.50, S.D. = 1.23), practicing
from online English lessons (M. =3.45, S.D. = 1.23) and
reading English news posts on Facebook (M. = 3.30, S.D. =
1.26).

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Table 2 (Continued)

However, the form of self-study the students rarely did

was practicing speaking with native English
friends/teachers (M = 1.85, S.D. = .75) and watching live
TV English broadcast (M = 1.80, S.D. = .41). The forms of
self-study the students sometimes did included, from
highest to lowest mean, chatting and texting with friends
in English (M = 2.55, S.D. = .99), reading English fiction
and magazines (M = 2.15, S.D. = .58), and studying words
from English standard thesaurus (M = 2.00, S.D. = .91).

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6. Conclusion
This survey was conducted to investigate if the students of
English at Kasetsart University Chalermphrakiat Sakon Nakhon
Province Campus did self-study of English and the forms of self-
study they did. The results from the survey showed that most of
the students who responded the questionnaire were female and
they were found to do self-study of English on a frequent basis.
As for the forms of self-study, it was found that practicing
listening from coursebooks and CDs was the self-study form the
students often did to a more extent than other forms. As for the
form of self-study the students rarely did, it was found that the
students rarely practiced speaking with English friends/teachers.
In addition, it was found that the students sometimes did self-
study by chatting and texting with friends in English.

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7. Implications and Recommendations
7.1 For further practicing and teaching
-The students of English should practice English on
their own by performing more forms of self-study
- Teachers should train the students in the use of
standard thesauruses in order to have them upskill
themselves more and more.

7.2 For future survey research

- Future survey research should endeavour to
compare the forms of self-study done by male and
females students.
- Future survey research should investigate the
forms of self-study carried out by good and poor students.
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8. References
Kirkpatrick, A. (2012). English in ASEAN: Implications for
Regional Multilingualism. Journal of
Multilingual and Multilingual Development,
33(4), 1-15.

Add more references as per what you have reviewed.

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More example

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