6 ways to use surveys in everyday life

  • 6 min read

Online surveys aren’t just for the professional world—you can use them in everyday life, too. At SurveyPlanet, our online survey platform offers unlimited possibilities for creating surveys that will allow you to gain insight, bring clarity, and better handle difficult decisions. And sometimes, our personal lives include more difficult decisions than those at the office.

Our online survey platform can be used to ask for opinions from loved ones, coordinate plans, or even document important personal details. Here are some ways you can use surveys in your daily life.

The importance of surveys in daily life

Even though surveys are more often used in academic or business circles, the importance of surveys in daily life should be considered. Maybe you’ve never thought about surveys as an everyday tool, but they can be a valuable way to gather information and make informed decisions about various aspects of life.

They can help you make well-informed decisions, meet people, and even aid personal growth. Overall, we recommend trying out some of the examples below to evaluate if surveys can positively affect your everyday life.

1. Getting to know new roommates

Moving into a new home is already stressful but when new roommates are involved it can be even more stressful. You might wonder about their cleaning habits or when they prefer to shower. There are a million questions to ask new roommates to get to know them better.

Avoid disagreements over who drank the last bit of almond milk by creating an online survey for everyone to better work out routines.

Ask questions about living habits like:

  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how neat/clean are you?
  • What time do you wake up in the morning?
  • What time do you go to bed?
  • What’s your preferred method for handling conflict?
  • What chores do you enjoy?
  • What chores do you hate?
  • How often do you have guests over?

Ask any question that might help the roommate experience to be better.

After better understanding the living habits of new roommates, toss in a few questions about hobbies, food preferences, goals, and other personal details. Have each roommate fill out the survey, including yourself, and share the answers. This can help everyone have a good relationship from the onset and continue coexisting better down the line.

2. Planning a group trip

When planning a trip with a large group, it’s difficult to ensure meeting everyone’s needs without an organized way to collect information. Whether cooperatively planning a group trip or in charge of coordination, an online survey can help you collect needed information to plan a group adventure (and it prevents your phone blowing up with group messages).

A survey can ask questions about every detail of a trip— where to stay, how to get there, what to do, what to eat, and scheduling.

The following questions can help you plan a group trip:

  • List any guests you intend to bring.
  • Check any of the following date ranges that work for your schedule.
  • What’s your preferred method of travel?
  • What’s your budget range for this entire trip?
  • Check any activities you want to do.
  • Do you have any health restrictions?
  • Do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions?
  • List any types of food you dislike.

Once the list of questions has been answered figure out exactly when the trip can occur, the feasible budget, types of restaurants that work for the group, and other helpful information. This should make planning the group outing a breeze.

3. Choosing a restaurant for dinner

Whether having dinner with a small group of friends or a large group, choosing a restaurant that pleases everyone can be difficult. Use an online survey to plan everything—from the day to the exact time of day to which restaurant.

To help you get started, consider asking the following questions:

  • Which of the following days/times work for your schedule?
  • Select all types of cuisines you enjoy.
  • Do you have any dietary restrictions or food allergies? Select all that apply.

Once information from your group is gathered, find restaurants that meet everyone’s preferences. You can even send a follow-up survey listing all the appropriate restaurants so everyone can vote on their favorite. Using an online survey to plan a group dinner can help avoid unpleasantries and hard feelings.

4. Tracking your health

Although there are plenty of apps out there to help track health, none can customize exactly what is tracked. If you want to keep tabs on your health, create an online survey that asks specific health-related questions.

Possible questions to track health might include:

  • How do you rate your quality of sleep from last night?
  • What’s your mood today?
  • Check any workouts you completed today.
  • What’s your overall energy level today?
  • List all the food and drink consumed today.

Then set up the survey to be sent every day. Once you fill it out consistently, easily compare each day and see trends in your life. This unique way of tracking health can help you be more consistent and reach health-related goals.

5. Keeping a daily journal

Just like a health journal, online surveys can be used to keep a daily journal if you find it difficult to do so the old-fashioned way. Using online surveys is also the perfect way to collect all your thoughts if you want to focus on only certain areas. Brainstorm different questions you want to ask yourself. These might include:

  • What was today’s best moment?
  • What makes you feel grateful?
  • What made you feel stressed today?
  • How can you improve tomorrow?

Surveys can provide additional information on personal development topics like emotional intelligence, communication skills, time management, and stress management. This information can be used to learn new skills and strategies for personal growth.

Keeping a daily journal with an online survey can help you become more mindful. If working towards a goal, make a few questions about that goal. Use your daily journal survey to be more focused on certain areas of your life. Once your survey is created, set it up to be sent every day. Over time, go back through previous journals to see how life has changed.

6. Making decisions

Making any decision, big or small, can be difficult. Maybe you have a group you go to for advice when facing a tough decision. To gather people’s opinions in a more structured way, consider compiling questions into a survey to avoid a lot of phone calls. Whether facing several decisions or one big one, an online survey can help you collect feedback from friends.

Here are some question examples:

  • Rate how well you think this hair color would look on me.
  • Which car should I buy?
  • Which neighborhood should I move to?
  • Where should I vacation this year?
  • Which gym should I join?

Do you need assistance with writing simple survey questions? The SurveyPlanet survey builder offers hundreds of pre-written questions that can be used as inspiration, or as they are. However, you may want to become a seasoned survey writer. In that case, we recommend you read some of our tips about making fun survey questions that will make respondents glad to participate or how to avoid common biased survey questions.

Discover the full potential of surveys in everyday life with SurveyPlanet

With a pro account with SurveyPlanet, you can add images to questions and answers. Help friends and family more easily answer questions with images, especially if it’s a visual question. Also, use question branching to ask a series of questions about a specific topic based on how the first question in a series was answered.

To collect feedback from friends and family, simply send them a link and ask them to fill it out when they get a chance. This will show that you appreciate their time and value their opinion without overloading their phone with questions.

Who knew online surveys had so many possibilities? If you want to try one of these ideas out or create a survey based on your own thoughts, sign up for an account with SurveyPlanet today. Start creating surveys to use in your everyday life.

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