This article explains how to view and analyze the results of your surveys to report on them.

Access the results overview

To see the results of your survey, either to check on the participation rate or to extract the final results, go to Surveys, select the survey of interest and click Results.

Here you will see a header that summarizes:

• Survey title
• Open date
• Close date
• Number of responses
• Participation rate in %
• Status of the survey
• Privacy settings if the survey is visible or confidential

Within this overview, you can select two different types of views to visualize the data, the List view and the Heatmap view. You can switch between the views by clicking on the toggle button on the upper-right side of the screen.

Favorability

For scale questions, you can see their Favorability. Favorability represent the percentage of respondents who answered a question positively, by rating them 4 or 5. Favorability helps you identify patterns, trends, and inclinations more easily. Learn more about favorability here.

Themes

Themes are custom topics that you can use to group questions together (for example, "employee satisfaction", "company values").

When questions are grouped in themes, you can see the total theme's favorability in the results overview. This offers a quick way to glean insights and identify trends in survey results.

List view

Themes

The list view lists all questions, which you can group in themes. 

Each theme row provides insights on responses to all scale questions within a theme:

• Theme favorability: the average of positive responses to all scale questions in a theme.
• Theme distribution: the distribution of average negative, neutral and positive answers to all scale questions in a theme.
• Theme participation rate: the share of responses to all scale questions in a theme.

Questions without a theme are grouped together in a separate row. The NPS question is in its own group (as you cannot add NPS questions to a theme).

Notes
▶︎ Theme favorability relates to the filters you apply. If for example you filter by one department, the numbers apply to the survey participants who are in such department only.
▶︎ Confidentiality rules apply. You can see theme favorability and distribution only if answers to all individual questions in the theme are above the confidentiality threshold.

Single questions

Click each theme row to view a list of all questions in the theme, with their relevant data. For each question, you can view the different participation rates, comments , favorability, and distribution of responses. 

For scale, single-choice and multiple-choice questions, you see the following result distribution:

Note:
For open-text questions, there is no visualization available.

Heatmap view

To see how survey results compare across different segments, such as different departments, use the Heatmap view.

The heatmap is only available for scale questions and can be segmented based on different attributes. Segmenting will divide the heatmap into the values of the selected attribute. By default, the heatmap will be segmented by department. To apply a different segmentation, click Segmented by and select a different attribute from the drop-down list.

Themes

In the heatmap, questions are grouped in themes, if you have added themes to your survey questons.

For each theme, you can see the theme favorability (the average of positive responses to all scale questions in the theme), across the selected segment. For example, you can see the favorability for "employee satisfaction" in different departments. Click each theme to see the questions grouped under it, and their individual favorability.

Notes 
▶︎ Questions without a theme are grouped together in a separate row. The NPS question is in its own group (as you cannot add NPS questions to a theme).
▶︎ Confidentiality rules apply. The individual questions in the theme have received a number of answers that is above the confidentiality threshold you set. Otherwise they will not be shown.

 

Delta and scores view

You have two options to see scores:
▶︎ Delta view: It shows the difference for each attribute/segment towards the total of the segment. For example, splitting by workplace will have the all responses column with the total score across all workplaces and then the delta, the difference between the total score and each workplace's score. 
▶︎ Scores view: The scores view displays the actual survey responses from the participants.

Heatmaps are displayed in a range of colors red and green. The darker the shade of green, the more favorable the delta response. On the contrary, the darker the shade of red, the more unfavorable the delta response. The difference in the score displayed and the shade of the color is relative to the overall score or filtered overall score.

You can download a picture of the heatmap by clicking the download button.

Tip:
To explore this feature, use sample surveys.
Under Surveys, click Create sample surveys here, at the bottom of the page. At the top of the page, click the Created on filter. You’ll see three surveys with sample results generated from your employee data, that you can test freely.

Use filters

You can use the Filters to break down your survey results and dive deeper into the survey results for the various groups of participants. To filter the responses, either use the preset filters   Department, Workplace, or  Team  or select a different filter by clicking on   + Filter.

Note that the available filters and filter values depend on the attributes you have access to.

The scores on the Heatmap and the List views depend on the filters applied to the results:
▶︎ If filters are applied:  the scores are displayed for respondents that match the applied filter.
▶︎ If no filters are applied:  the scores are displayed in relation to 100% of the respondents. 

Tip:
You can filter results by employee tenure. Based on the employees' hire dates, Personio calculates tenure groups that help you see how results vary depending on tenure.

Filtering logic

If you apply multiple filters, they will be combined with and, whereas values within a filter are combined with or. 

Example
▶︎ You want to see results for a specific team (Sales) and workplace location (London). This means you would only see the responses that came from people who are in Sales and work in the London workplace.

▶︎ If you filter results for two or more values of the same filter, like Sales and Marketing, you would see responses that came from people who work either in Sales or Marketing.

You can always switch between List and Heatmap view by clicking on the toggle on the upper-right side of the screen.

To filter themes, click the Themes button next to filter and select the required theme options. You can now view all the questions categorized by the selected theme.

Filters and confidentiality in survey results

Using filters, you can take a deep dive into participant data, but to maintain confidentiality, certain measures have been applied:

▶︎ Minimum number of responses: Results are only displayed if the minimum number of responses for a specific filtered group of participants is met.
▶︎ Grouping responses: In case the minimum number of responses for a specific filter value is not met, the responses will be grouped with the next smallest filter value. This is repeated until the group of filter values reaches the minimum number of responses required.

Learn more about Data protection in confidential surveys.

Detailed response view per question

To see a detailed view of the responses to a question, click the question in the list view. A drawer opens up where you can see:

• the question
• the question type
• the number of responses received
• the participation rate
• the different responses and comments

You can navigate between the different questions by using the arrows in the top-right corner of the drawer. The way how response details are displayed depends on the question type.

You can also filter comments in this view. They can be filtered by the rating or multiple choice. For visible surveys, you can view the name of the commenter. 

In the overview of all surveys, users will now be able to search for a survey by name or status.

Scale questions

For scale questions, the five different scales are listed separately underneath each other using bar charts. The bars are sorted from 1 to 5 and the coloring ranges are:

• 1-2 (considered as negative): red
• 3 (considered as neutral): orange
• 4-5 (considered positive): green

The percentage of all participants who have chosen this particular rating is shown above each bar, and the number of respondents is shown next to the bar.

Single- and multiple-choice questions

For single- and multiple-choice questions, the different options are listed separately underneath each other using bar charts. The bars are sorted from the most chosen to the least chosen answers with bar charts. The percentage of all participants who have chosen this particular rating is shown above each bar, and the number of respondents is shown next to the bar.

Open text questions

For open-text questions, the different answers are listed separately underneath each other.

Compare results over time with recurring surveys

With recurring surveys, you can send the same survey in multiple rounds over time, and compare results for scale and NPS questions. This helps you identify trends, patterns, and areas of concern in real-time.

1. Go to Surveys, and click the relevant recurrent survey.
2. In the Results overview, click List.
3. On the left, select the survey rounds you want to focus on. Click Filter to filter the results as needed.

Tip
When you filter by Department, Workplace, Team, or Legal entity, the filter name reflects the entity's name at the time of each round. If a team changes its name between round 1 and round 2, the filter will display the old name for round 1 and the new name for round 2.

See the evolution of a theme over time

For each theme, you can compare results between rounds. In each theme row, you can see:

• The difference between the favorability for the selected round and the previous one.
• The favorability trend: the change in favorability across the latest rounds is shown in a graph. 

If you click a theme row, a drawer opens, showing:

• The trend of the theme's favorability over time.
• The distribution of the theme's favorability over time, in a stacked graph for each round. Hover over each stack to see the actual number of responses for each option (favorable, neutral, unfavorable).

See the evolution of a single question over time

The same depth of analysis (favorability and distribution over time) is available for each scale and NPS question in the survey. To see it, click a question. 

If the question is part of a theme, click the arrow in the theme row to open the list of questions, then click the question.

Note that confidentiality rules apply when showing results. Favorability data might not be available for questions that did not receive enough answers to meet the confidentiality minimum.

Tip:
To explore this feature, use sample surveys.
Under Surveys, click Create sample surveys here, at the bottom of the page. At the top of the page, click the Created on filter. You’ll see three surveys with sample results generated from your employee data, that you can test freely.

More information

To learn more about Surveys, refer to the following resources:

• Overview of Personio Surveys
• Create a survey
• Share survey results using custom reports