Survey Methodology

Transcription

Surveys are a useful way to collect information about a range of topics and there are different types of surveys depending on what kind of information you need. We’ll briefly talk about 4 different types of surveys: telephone surveys, mail surveys, face to face surveys, and online surveys. Because most everyone has access to a phone and because phone numbers, in part, can be randomly generated, telephone surveys are a great way to get a random sample from a large population. The downside of a telephone survey is that it can cost a lot of money and many people screen their calls using caller ID. Mail surveys are useful because generally most people have a permanent address where they receive mail and organizations can obtain a database from the US postal service that contains every delivery address in the country. That way you could send a questionnaire to a random sample of people in a given location. Mail surveys also allow respondents to take the survey in the privacy of their own home and at a time that is convenient for them. Although relatively inexpensive, mail surveys have a low response rate since many people might think the survey is junk mail, or they forget to complete or return the survey. Face-to-face surveys are probably the most expensive surveys, especially when you want to conduct a lot of interviews and those interviews are spread across a large geographic area. One of the biggest benefits of a face-to-face survey is the higher response rate. People are generally more likely to agree to answer a survey when they are asked by a person standing right in front of them. Online surveys are useful because they tend to be much cheaper than telephone, mail, and face-to-face surveys. This is especially true if you have access to your target populations email addresses. If you don’t then you may need access to an online panel. An online panel is made up of people who have been recruited or have volunteered to take online surveys. They provide their contact information to a company or organization that then sends them different surveys via the internet. These respondents usually get some type of small financial incentive for every survey they complete. Like mail surveys online surveys allow respondents to take the survey in at a time and location that is convenient for them. Deciding on which type of survey you need depends on a variety of factors. Here are three basic questions that you need to ask yourself when conducting survey research. First: what type of questions are you going to ask? If they are very personal questions then a mail or online survey might work better than a telephone or face-to-face survey. Some survey questions require a respondent to view a video beforehand. In that case an online survey is necessary. Second: What’s the best way of getting a hold of your target population? Not everyone has easy access to the internet so an internet survey might not be appropriate for certain target populations. Some hard to reach populations, such as homeless people, might require researchers to go to locations where such individuals hang out and conduct face to face surveys. Third: How much time and money do you have? If you need to predict the outcome of an election happening next week, a telephone survey is probably your best bet. A mail survey would take way too long. But telephone surveys can be expensive. Face-to-face surveys can take the longest amount of time to complete and can also be the most expensive, but because of higher response rates, they can be the most accurate. Each of these four types of surveys has different strengths and weaknesses. Because of this you’ll sometimes see a study that uses more than one survey method to reach a target population. A researcher needs to assess which type of survey best gets at the information needed balanced by which method can be completed given specific time and budgetary constraints.