Advantages of E-Surveys

Reduced costs: No interviewers, no telephone charges, no paper, no printing, no postage and no data entry.
No interviewer bias
Increased accuracy: No transcription errors
Reduced Time: Survey responses start coming in within minutes of contact.
Increased flexibility: E-surveys enhance design flexibility by permitting questionnaire changes on the fly.
They can improve quota achievement through up-to-the-minute monitoring.
Surveys can be designed that interactively adapt based on respondents' prior answers.

They are recommended if:

You can provide a quality population list having a high proportion of current and accurate e-mail addresses
The population of interest typically uses computers and the Internet in their day-to-day working lives
You need to contact a large sample, or possibly even the entire population
You need to screen a large population to find rare but important members
The survey is concise and well-structured enough to be comfortably completed in one sitting

They are problematical if:

The population of interest is not connected, or a good list of e-mail addresses is not available
It is critical that results represent all members of the population, not just those with access to the Internet
Questioning is lengthy, complex, or requires respondents to look up information
Questioning is mostly exploratory and uses lots of open-ended questions

How they have been used by membership associations

Sue Froggatt

Training & Consulting

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