Understanding and Applying Research Design by Abbott Martin Lee; McKinney Jennifer; & Jennifer McKinney

Author:Abbott, Martin Lee; McKinney, Jennifer; & Jennifer McKinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2012-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

Online Surveys

Online surveys typically involve a questionnaire that is identical to the questionnaire used by a face-to-face interviewer or in a self-administered survey. It could be argued that it offers significant improvement over the hard copy survey instrument, however, in the complexity that can be assessed, given the user friendliness of online branching, piping, and so on. The same issues of instrument reliability and validity apply when constructing an online survey, and the overall research process relies on the same process of sampling (for representativeness) and is subject to the same constraints for response rates (for inferential conclusions and generalizability).

What is distinctive about online surveys is the way they are delivered, with both advantages and disadvantages over traditional methods. Typically, questionnaires are posted online in a Web format so that the respondent can access the questionnaire through his or her own computer at any time of day or night, in any location worldwide. This would be difficult for most researchers to create on their own, so several online companies have developed the architecture to accommodate such efforts. Some of the most popular online companies are SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) and Zoomerang (http://www.zoomerang.com/online-surveys/).

The advantages of online surveys include greater geographic access, greater adaptability to respondent subgroups, and reduced costs. With widespread accessibility to computer technology, many people rely on the use of computers in their everyday work and private lives. Accessing a survey through this avenue is therefore a natural way to introduce a questionnaire. The request to participate in such a study is therefore no longer an atypical request, with some exceptions for those living remotely without computer access or those who choose not to use online processes.

The online questionnaire is also adaptable to respondent subgroups. For instance, if the respondent group includes veterans and nonveterans, questionnaire items that relate to these subgroups can be fashioned so that only the appropriate items appear to the appropriate group. Thus, for example, if a purpose of the survey was to assess discrimination over military service, only the veterans would be given items about military discrimination. This process is conceptually no different from the contingency questions in self-administered surveys, but on an experiential level the respondent not affected by the inquiry need never see some items that decrease response time, thus maintaining the appropriate face validity of the questionnaire. The branching is constructed in HTML and transparent to the user.

Overall costs are reduced because the online questionnaire is not delivered on paper through the mail and requires less handling. We say “reduced” because there are still costs associated with the online version. The costs primarily involve the price of the software necessary to host the questionnaire and the necessity to mail hardcopy questionnaires to those randomly selected respondents who have no e-mail address. Despite these costs, however, the overall process of the online survey is generally significantly more cost effective, especially in large-scale research projects.

There are also disadvantages to online surveys beyond those already noted. There is a bias toward those with e-mail addresses as there is among respondents of telephone surveys with nonlisted numbers.

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