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"What
response rate should we expect from an online survey?"
Online
survey response rates vary depending upon:
»
The type of survey your organization wishes to conduct,
»
The level of communication and encouragement respondents
are given to participate, and
»
The procedure of the survey administration process.
Online surveys consistently produce the highest overall
response
rates due to their ease of completion and lower time
requirements. Through its proprietary survey
administration
process, Infosurv
typically achieves online employee survey
responses
rates exceeding 90%.
"Is
an online approach the best method to administer a survey?"
When
deciding on the best method to administer a survey, you should
consider the culture of your organization, the profile
of your employees and/or clients, and your organizations' level of
comfort with technology.
Experience
shows that the online method almost always produces the
highest overall response rate and cost-effectiveness. Key
questions to ask before moving forward with an online survey are:
»
Do a representative majority of survey respondents have
access to a computer on the Internet?
»
Is there a convenient way of directing them to the
online survey (i.e., email invitations, internal memos,
or access to a computer-kiosk)?
When
the answer to both of these questions is "Yes," an online survey is probably the way to
go.
"Should
we administer the survey ourselves or outsource?"
Companies
typically consider outsourcing the administration of an
online survey because:
»
They don't have the in-house experience or expertise
necessary to properly design and administer the online survey,
»
They would rather keep internal resources focused on
serving employees directly, or they feel that employees would be more candid when
completing the survey if they know that responses will
be collected and processed by a third-party research
firm.
A
common misconception is that outsourcing is "too
expensive." Most often, it is cheaper to outsource
an online survey than perform it in-house,
once one considers the opportunity costs of distracting
managers away from their day-to-day duties to assist
with the study. Online surveys outsourced to a full-service
research firm such as Infosurv
start around $2500.
"How
can we protect both the security and anonymity of the
survey?"
Survey
security and respondent anonymity can at first appear to
be competing objectives. On the one hand, responses must
be tracked to assure against duplicate or unauthorized
survey responses (i.e., stuffing the ballot box.) On the
other hand, respondents must feel that their anonymity is
being protected in order to yield the most honest
feedback.
The
best way to guarantee both survey security and
respondent anonymity is by outsourcing the
administration of an online survey to a neutral,
third-party research firm such as Infosurv.
A
third-party research firm can not only protect the
security of the survey through the use of a unique
Personal Access Code (PAC) for each respondent, but can
also protect respondent anonymity by stripping response
data of any personally identifying information before
passing survey results back to the client. In addition,
third-party research can present survey results only in
aggregate, further protecting respondent
anonymity.
Please
visit the Infosurv website and learn more
about their online survey
services. | 
