Performance-Focused Learner Surveys: Using Distinctive Questioning to Get Actionable Data and Guide Learning Effectiveness

The Book
Performance-Focused Learner Surveys provides a research-inspired approach to surveying learners, gathering meaningful data, and reporting results with clarity. Based on years of practical experience, this second-edition expands on the original classic. It shows how to achieve three goals in evaluation: (1) measuring learning effectiveness, (2) producing actionable results, and (3) sending messages that nudge action.

The Second Edition
The second edition includes improved question wording, double the number of candidate questions, and additional chapters on comment questions, stealth messaging, improving survey response rates, tailoring questions and more.

The Benefits
Based on wisdom from the science of learning, Dr. Will Thalheimer has created the first book on surveying learners that aligns learner surveys to the learning research. With optimism, humor, and great writing, Thalheimer provides a complete and rigorous guide for surveying learners. This second edition will help trainers, instructional designers, teachers, professors, elearning developers, and chief learning officers build virtuous cycles of continuous improvement—while convincing organizational stakeholders of the benefits of improved survey methods. Evaluation and survey experts will benefit as well by considering the practical benefits of Thalheimer’s distinctive questioning approach.

Testimonials from Thought Leaders

Quite simply, the BEST book on learner survey creation and utilization (even better than the first edition), Period!
-- Karl M. Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg University

With this book, Will Thalheimer provides an important contribution, particularly in showing how to ensure that learner feedback provides a true gauge of on-the-job success. The book is research-based, comprehensive, and based on real world experiences.
-- Jack J. Phillips, Chairman, ROI Institute

This is evidence-based practice at the master level.
-- Julie Dirksen, Author of Design For How People Learn

Will Thalheimer does a great job of telling us why the current practice doesn’t work and replaces it with thoughtful and sensible advice for feedback tools that will provide valid and actionable data.
-- Robert O. Brinkerhoff, Director, Brinkerhoff Evaluation Institute

The insightful (and inciteful) work that aptly skewered current approaches now provides an even more valuable alternative that both helps us now and educates us to do better going forward. A valuable contribution indeed!
-- Dr. Clark Quinn, Author of Learning Science for Instructional Designers

Will Thalheimer, PhD, is one of the definitive myth busters in our field, and he does it with great precision but also humor. It’s good that he’s explaining the things we need to know about learner surveys, because there are just too many fairytales. We must be held to a higher standard.
-- Patti Shank, PhD, Author of Write Better Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess Learning

In the second edition of his paradigm-busting book, Performance-Focused Learner Surveys, Will Thalheimer continues his quest to help learning professionals make training evaluation more valuable—not just for proving training’s value, but as decision support for continuous improvement.
-- Roy Pollock, DVM, PhD, Chief Learning Officer, 6Ds® Company, Co-author of Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning

Given heavy reliance on surveys to plan and evaluate training programs, an evidence-based approach to construction and interpretation of surveys is way overdue. Kudos to Will Thalheimer for leading the way!
-- Ruth Colvin Clark, Legendary Learning Researcher & Consultant