Online surveys

What do you need to know about using online surveys sites (such as Survey Monkey) for your dissertation research? The advantages of such surveys are that they can be set to be anonymous, your participants can do the survey at their leisure and can be from anywhere around the world, and you can set it up exactly as you want. However, there are a number of negatives to consider. Participants may not finish the survey, leaving you with incomplete data that you typically cannot use. The surveys can be tricky to set up for the first time user, and to go beyond the basics (about 10 questions), you may have to pay a large annual fee.

Some things I have learned over the years of doing online surveys. Keep them as short as possible (no more than 15 minutes), longer than that you will have a lot of missing data. Have several friends be pilot subjects and take the survey looking for anything that is not clear or misspelled. Interview these individuals after they have completed it and get their impressions of the experience. Did they ever feel offended with any questions? Was it interesting or boring? How long did it take them to complete it?

Begin your study with a consent form, end it stating that by pressing the "NEXT" button they agree to be in your study. Make sure you specifically ask if people fit your inclusion criteria (e.g., over 18, married at least 10 years, native English speaker, etc.). Set up the question so people who do not fit the criteria are exited from the survey (this may be called a logic function, e.g., if less than 17 yrs old they are sent to a "thank you, but you do not meet the necessary qualifications" page). Finally, make sure you thank your participant for being in your study! 

Next time, I will consider how to handle finding a study that is too similar to yours. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu