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Online surveys were first used beginning in 1987. Their popularity and use has increased
as internet accessibility and prevalence has increased.
Who Uses Online Surveys. Online surveys have become popular in many areas of research.
Many online surveys measure levels of satisfaction with a product, event or service.
Typical Online Surveys: Customer Satisfaction
Educational Surveys Market Research
Event Planning Employee Satisfaction
Product Satisfaction Healthcare
Non-profits Advantages of Online Surveys
Wide Distribution Majority of US population has access to the
internet and email. Surveys can be sent and completed easily by
people all over the world. Advantages of Online Surveys
Ease for Participants Participants can complete surveys at a time
convenient for them, not the researcher. Participants can complete surveys in their
own homes, at work, etc. Ease of online surveys enables a faster response
time from participants. Automatic Data Sorting and Analysis
Responses are automatically entered and stored on a computer program.
Saves time and energy for researcher Anonymous
Respondents can be completely anonymous online (no physical contact with researcher).
Respondents to email surveys can be anonymous if they use a different method to return the
survey (such as printing out the survey, removing identifiable information, and returning the
completed survey via postal mail or fax). Many email surveys can be made anonymous by
using a link in the email to the survey, so the participant does not respond from their
email account. Cost Effective
Save money on postage, interviewers, printing, and data input.
Disadvantages of Online Surveys Self-Reporting
Online surveys are completed without an interviewer or researcher present, so the participant
must complete the survey on their own. Response Rate
The response rate for online surveys has been decreasing.
No way to ensure participants complete surveys. Often people find online surveys a nuisance
or think they are an advertisement and therefore ignore the survey and refuse to participate.
Repetition of Participants Depending on the type of survey utilized (email
only vs. offered to every visitor of a website), the same person may answer the survey more
than once. Sample and Generalizability
Population and sample limited to those with computer and internet access.
Difficult to ensure a representative population sample with online surveys.
If the sample is not representative of the population, the findings cannot be generalized
to the population as a whole. Hi Folks, Jeff here with a quick demonstration
on the ease and practicality of using online surveys for data collection.
What I would like to show you are two different surveys I am currently collecting data on
in the field of recreation, at my athletic club. Each survey uses a different online
survey provider, and each is targeted toward one of my two areas of management at the athletic
club the staff and the members. Here we go…
My employee survey was done through Survey Monkey. This website offers a free program
and tiered levels of paid services. When respondents see the survey, it will be
called Do You Like Music. I have a single question posed to the respondents, and Survey
Monkey allows me several different ways to ask my question. I also have options to make
questions mandatory, have blank fields for them to fill in, submit more than one answer,
etc. I can preview my survey to see how it looks, then I choose how I want to collect
data, and here are my options. Finally, I send the survey out and collect results.
My member survey was done through our web host for more powerful options and a cleaner
look since we are paying for this service What the members would see is actually this:
a professional e-bulletin coming from the General Manager, see there’s a banner of
spinning bikes, so they know I’m legit. I sent this survey out to more than 6000 people
and have over 200 responses so far. The survey is a simple 3 questions plus an optional comments
field. By clicking on question detail, I can instantly get the statistics of each of my
3 questions. What I find is a typical bell-curve of customer satisfaction on my 7-point scale.
If I wanted to view all of the comments left I would click here, and when I decide to share
this information with my staff, I would need to export the data into a more convenient
format. To do that I simply click export and choose the format.
Thanks for taking a look at my examples. Now enjoy some more classical music and learn
about the journal article Sarah
and I studied.