TEDx Attendee Survey

The Survey

The survey asks your attendees one question: “How likely are you to recommend this TEDx event to a friend or colleague?”

To answer, attendees select a number between 0 and 10 and can optionally explain why they chose the score they did — they might comment on the talks, the food, or how the event was managed. All of the scores are then compiled into one result, calculated using the Net Promoter Score system. Take a look at a sample survey below.

You have the option to send the survey in one of more than 35 languages.

Understanding your Score and Reading your Attendee Feedback

Several weeks after your event, you will receive an email with a link to a dashboard with your attendee feedback score and audience responses.

The Net Promoter Score system sorts your audience responses into three groups: 

• Promoters: those who give a score of 9 or 10
• Passives: those who give a score of 7 or 8
• Detractors those who give scores of 0-6 

When reviewing your score, it’s important to remember that the number you see is not an average of the attendee responses. It is the net result of subtracting the detractors from the promoters. The score itself is based on a scale of -100 to 100. 

While a single number seems like an easy way to evaluate your event, our team at TED doesn’t take these scores at face value — and neither should you. All events, no matter their score, have aspects that should be celebrated as well as the potential for improvement. Your guests’ comments can provide you with valuable insight, context about their experience and guidance for your next event.

We know that each team and event is unique, including the challenges that you may face. As a direct line of communication with your attendees, the survey can help you gather specific guidance to draw attention to elements you might otherwise miss and pinpoint exactly how to build your team’s knowledge for your next event.

Increasing Audience Awareness and Participation

The more feedback your audience gives, the more insight you’ll get on what’s working and what you might want to adjust. We recommend taking the following steps to increase your attendees’ participation:

• Collect attendee email addresses before the event. Please be aware that your venue and/or local government may have specific data privacy policies. This can affect how you obtain information for the TEDx Attendee Survey, so you should build appropriate processes (e.g. "opt-in" when attendees sign up to the event) to gather and share this information in accordance with local data privacy laws.
• Let your attendees know that they’ll receive a short survey — you can mention it in the closing remarks of the event, in a post-event thank you email, or on your social media.
• The day after your event, you will receive an email from the TEDx Team with a pre-filled link to the Attendee Survey Uploader. Please submit it ASAP! (And please make sure your event page is up to date!)
• On the Survey Uploader page, please paste your attendees’ email addresses— no listservs please!
• If any attendees report that they did not receive the survey, please ask them to check their spam inbox.

Please note: collected email addresses are primarily used to deploy the attendee survey. Responders who opt in to TED communications will also receive newsletters or other emails.

If you have any questions or difficulty with the survey, please write to tedxpostevent@ted.com so we can help.