Large scale surveys conducted by research companies tend to use questionnaires which can be scanned, saving much time and money, but this option might not be open to you. If you are a student, however, spend some time getting to know what equipment is available for your use as you could save yourself a lot of time and energy by adopting this approach. Also, many software packages at the push of a key produce professional graphs, tables and pie charts which can be used in your final report, again saving a lot of time and effort.