When I went about creating a jobs related survey for the blog I wanted to get a variation of responses from a cross-section of people on something that not only interested me about jobs, but that many people can relate to as well. I came up with a survey I named  “ How are you living with Loans”. My six-question survey included multiple choices, open-ended and yes or no format. I wanted it to take just   five to seven minutes for a respondent to complete the survey so I tested it out and it was fine. Making up the survey   was the easy part. Getting people to take the survey was harder than I thought it would be.  It was like some people did not even believe that the survey would take only   a few minutes.

Some felt like it may have been a gimmick in order to make them sit through a longer, more detailed survey. I found it a bit funny at first then it was a bit frustrating. I posted it on social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn and found that I was more successful when I reached out to people individually by posting on their walls or sending a personal message instead of just making a general post. In all 24 people completed my survey, which I thought was   pretty good for the time it was posted.

I did try and target particular groups of people on these sites, but was not any more successful.  54% of the respondents had completed college within the last two years and  26% had been out of  college six years or more. More than half of the respondents   either had a job before graduating or found one within six months following graduation. While 79 % of respondents did not have to defer their loan repayment period, but 46 % will spend up to five years paying off that debt. In response to the question how has loan debt affected your quality of life all but five respondents have been affected negatively with many having to spend a large portion of monthly income on loan payments or not being sure what will happen once more than the minimum payment has to be made.

If doing a survey like this in the future I would add another question of two that would give me more data, remember to ask for contact information the first time around and send   out links for the survey individually. I have realized how much people like personalized messages.