E-surveys:
Consider this before you start
The Internet
provides a cheap, fast means of doing reader surveys—but
you have to know how to do it right.
By
Martha Spizziri, President, Boston Chapter
Ira Kerns knows research. He’s principal consultant of
New York City-based GuideStar Communications, a research firm
specializing in high-tech data collection. That’s been
his business for the past 15 years, and in the last year or
two, most of his surveys have been entirely Internet-based.
Sitting on a panel at a combined Boston/New York chapter meeting,
Kerns discussed various ways to handle Internet surveys.
Five Types
of Internet Surveys
1.
Plain text embedded in an e-mail message. This,
the simplest type of e-survey, is especially useful for taking
an international sampling. That’s because many users in
other countries may use older e-mail programs. There is a downside,
though: users can accidentally scramble the text around when
they reply to the message.
2.
E-mail with a Web-page attachment. A survey
in the shape of a Web form eliminates the potential for scrambled
text, since it generally uses radio buttons, check boxes, and
similar devices that help ensure the right answer goes with
the right question.
3.
A survey form on your Web site. A survey on
your site can be more confidential than e-mail, and therefore,
may increase response.
4.
A downloadable Web survey. These can be very
sophisticated. A downloadable survey is usually a mini-application,
and it can be especially well suited to a long, complex survey
that is likely to be worked on in several sessions before the
participant sends it back. It can even be programmed to work
with data on the participant’s hard drive.
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Five
tips
for e-survey success
1.
Get tabulation experience. You can get off-the-shelf
software to create your own online survey. Just keep in
mind that if you lack number-crunching expertise this
may not be the route to take.
2.
Be user-friendly. Make sure the survey’s
typeface, color, graphics, navigation, and interface are
user-friendly.
3.
Work with the interactive environment. Radio
buttons, drop-down boxes and the like help ensure that
data is submitted accurately.
4.
Make sure you design the survey with "browser awareness."
Do most of your users have the technological
ability to answer the survey? The same applies to e-mail
surveys. Can they view Web-page attachments, graphics,
or formatted text?
5.
Do pre-survey recruiting. Send an invitation
to create participant readiness. Emphasize the survey’s
value — how respondents will benefit from completing
the questionnaire.
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5.
Live or interactive chat. This method works
very well for qualitative research. Kerns distinguishes between
a live chat, which occurs in real time with a moderator, and
an interactive chat, which is more like an ongoing bulletin
board where people can post comments and responses over a period
of days, week, or months.
A real-time discussion tends to be a bit more dynamic, says
Kerns, but a bulletin-board style discussion can be an advantage
if anonymity would tend to increase response. The disadvantage
of the latter type is that you can’t know for sure who
the respondents really are. With a live chat, you can specifically
invite particular people and assign them a password for identification.
E-Survey Attributes
Internet surveys have several advantages over traditional methods.
Kerns lists a few:
-
Low
cost. E-surveys cost 40 to 60% less than
mail or telephone surveys.
-
Ease
of development. You can review and approve
the survey questionnaire online — an advantage if you’re
working with an outside firm or a staffer in a remote location.
-
Strong
response. Kerns claims to get response rates
between 40 and 60% on most of the e-surveys he does.
-
Shorter
development-to-implementation timeline.
Setup, data collection and reporting can be more than 60%
faster than with a paper survey, says Kerns.
-
Flexibility.
Quick response spawns other advantages. Since as many as
40% of responses to e-mail surveys arrive within 48 hours,
you’ll quickly know whether your response rate is too
low. You can then follow up right away with people who didn’t
respond via e-mail. The e-mail reminder can even include
a second copy of the questionnaire. "And you can do
it at almost no cost," Kerns says. "You can’t
do that with paper!" It’s also fairly easy to
move the deadline back to solicit more response.
-
Friendly
environment. The Web is a good medium for
sweepstakes or other incentives. A note of caution though;
because the Web is available to anyone, anywhere, you have
to make sure you know which laws govern your sweepstakes
efforts. In the case of a Web-based survey, says Kerns,
"Where the server is based determines what laws apply."
On the other hand, if you’re doing an e-mail survey,
you can’t send a sweepstakes offer to states that don’t
permit them.
For more information,
contact Ira Kerns at GuideStar Communications, (212) 426-2333,
gstar1@guidestarco.com,
http://www.guidestarco.com.
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