Compared to other health services, outpatient departments attract high levels of patient dissatisfaction and yet surveys of outpatients with the aims of improving services have been taking place for several years. So why is there still a high level of dissatisfaction? One of the reasons is that surveys are not always carried out in ways which produce information which is both accurate and useful, enabling services to be improved as a result. This publication offers a practical approach to obtaining the views of outpatient service users, including example questionnaires, information about non-survey methods, basic information about the analysis and dissemination of results, and how to make use of the information obtained.