Jeffrey Henning in his article Do phone surveys have a future? argues that while phone surveys have suffered at the hands of online surveys there is still a place for the telephone in the market research process. A point which I completely agree with.

While online surveys are essentially our bread and butter we have recently completed a number of recent projects where telephone interviews have been used successfully to capture the type of data that an online survey could never get.

Online surveys are great at quantitative data collection and are pretty good at qualitative surveying but they don’t allow for the type of probing questions which are quite often essential in qualitative research. (e.g. I see you rated the service as poor, why is that?, what would you do if you were in charge?)

The added bonus of telephone interviews is that respondents are generally far more candid with their responses compared to self completed surveys. Why? – I figure it has something to do with the fact that people are generally reluctant to commit their more sensitive views in written form.  Additionally, writing down your responses takes far more effort that just telling someone what you think.

To sum up, more than often we use telephone surveys to collect qualitative data so we are able to establish the lay of the land. The findings from the telephone interviews can then be used to implement an on-going monitoring which can be done effectively  by online surveys.

Online Tech Tips has an article titled How to create an online survey for free using Google Docs 

While I applaud the resourcefulness of this approach I can’t help thinking that it may be a little under powered for this kind of purpose.

In a nut shell the “Google Survey’ is using the Google Docs Spreadsheet function. It appears that there is some function that allows an online form to collect data in your spreadsheet. This came as a surpirise to me as I have used Google Spreadsheets for collorobnration before and had no idea that you could create a form for this purpose.

If you are looking for a free survey tool there are more suitable options that will offer greater functionality, Survey Gizmo is one that springs. For most small basic online surveys this should suit most needs.

Earlier I wrote about Green Market Research with Online Surveys which highlights efforts the market research industry can to to green up their business. Some of these were as lame  as turning off the light when you leave the room or using only one towel when staying in a hotel on business trips.

One real thing worth considering is using online surveys. I see that Gartner have taken this tack with their customer surveys. In their email invitation they write;

We appreciate your feedback.

Please take the time to provide valuable feedback for Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2008. By using the online version of our surveys, you’re helping our Green efforts to reduce paper consumption and waste.

I like it.

I came across an interesting paper that reports the possibility that online questionnaires might, all things being equal, produce slightly longer responses to open-ended questions than their paper-based counterparts.

Martyn Denscombe in his paper ‘The Length of Responses to Open-Ended Question – A Comparison of Online and Paper Questionnaires in Terms of a Mode Effect‘ (2007) investigates whether or not there is any difference between the responses of open ended questions to paper based surveys compared to online surveys.

Denscombe undertook an experiment survey was conducted that involved the random allocation of respondents into two groups who then completed a questionnaire either as a web-based online version or in an 2 Social Science Computer Review “optical mark recognition” (OMR) paper format. The research was designed to enable near identical groups to respond to near-identical questionnaires delivered in different modes.

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The OSU Web Accessibility Center (WAC has put together an interesting review of online survey sites.

In their review they access the usability of some of the main web-based survey sites. This review offers an excellent opportunity to compare side by side some of the key players in the online survey industry.

I read an interesting review on a number of online survey sites and how their email functionality stacks up. Online survey providers like uSuite or Surveygizmo come with email tools and the article gives some good tips on how to evaluate survey email tools.

It makes sense to be aware of of your survey providers sender score because there is not much use going to a lot of trouble and expenses building your survey only to have the survey invitation land into someones ‘Junk’ folder.  While the content of your email is important, the reputation of the sending company is also important.

Senderscore.org allows to to evaluate the sending reputation of your email provider. Be warned through Senderscore.org can become quite addictive

A useful post on www.marketresearchtech.com titled Fake Survey Software Reviews (How to Spot) provides some interesting suggestions on how to spot fake review sites.

Highlighted are a number of things to look out for but they main thing to be aware of is that fake review sites do exist and they are increasingly becoming pretty good at hiding their true motives i.e. to push a particular product. The best advice is to stick to mainstream review sites or active forums/blogs where it is clear that what you are reading is unbiased or at least the author has divulged any vested interest they may have.

MarketingProfs have published an article titled Seven Rules for Achieving Higher Online Survey Response Rates

In essence the rules mentioned are;

1. Make a good first impression
2. Do not assume that people will want to answer your survey and will respond just because you send an invitation.
3. Avoid biased questions
4. Do not ask too many questions, focus on the aim of your survey
5. Don’t spam your audience
6. Spend some time developing your survey
7. Share the wealth

What is not explicitly said but does come through loud and clear to me is if you wish to get a good response rate you need to sell your online survey. Whether it be for customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction or any other type of feedback you need to be able to clearly communicate to your respondents why they should answer your survey.

Your respondents are busy people and if you can clearly communicate why they should answer your survey and what will be done with the results, the more likely your sample group will buy into the concept and provide you with quality feedback.

Remember you do not just want people to complete your survey, a room full of monkeys could do that for you (while they are taking a rest from writing Shakespeare). The ability of your online survey being able to meet it’s goals is the honest and well thought responses from your respondents.

When building online surveys the temptation is just to reproduce the design of a paper survey without taking into consideration the capabilities that an online survey can give you.

One thing you can do easily do to jazz up your online survey is the addition of HTML features like video. Check out the Rock Research dance survey to see how this works.

Saw this article and thought it was an interesting way for schools to use online surveys to better understand their districts.

Monday, the De Soto Board of Education approved 6-1 hiring Ken DeSieghardt from DeSieghardt Strategic Communications to conduct a scientific survey in the district. Board member Randy Johnson dissented. Read the rest of this entry »