Online survey techniques: Current issues and future trends
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Keywords: surveys, pop-up, research, panels, RAWI, online groups, bulletin boards
Online survey techniques: Current issues and future trends Peter Comley Received (in revised form): 8 July 2002
Abstract Online surveys have already made a significant impact on research in the USA. However, in Europe and elsewhere in the world they have not. This paper discusses the reasons for this divide and the many issues surrounding online panels and website interviewing. It also covers online qualitative methods, and suggests that these may never become as mainstream as the quantitative methods (in Europe at least). It reviews areas where online research is likely to make a major impact and discusses potential future developments.
Introduction to online surveys
Peter Comley Virtual Surveys Limited Virtual House 3 Seton Drive Hook Hampshire RG27 9QS UK Tel: +44 (0)1256 767576 Fax: +44 (0)1256 760894 E-mail: [email protected]
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Some of the first online surveys1,2 were conducted in the early 1990s by academics and took the form of e-mail surveys. These suggested that the main benefits of online research were the potential to deliver results much more quickly and cheaply than conventional research. For example, they quoted obtaining survey results in two to three days rather than two to three weeks (as when conducted traditionally). They also suggested that there might be some quality benefit in terms of better (more) answers to open-ended questions. However, these studies also pointed out that there did seem to be a trade-off in terms of response rate. Online surveys were often filled out by fewer people than conventional ones. Commercial surveys soon followed3,4 that confirmed these findings and set the stage for a massive expansion of online research that started to take place in the late 1990s. A lot of the initial work concerned tests to confirm the validity of online research. The findings of these were somewhat mixed, with a number of surveys showing differences between online and offline methods. However, in retrospect, this was probably because they chose as a survey subject things related to IT or the Internet. Not surprisingly, there did turn out to be a difference in attitudes towards IT if you happened to sample online the early adopters of the Internet versus an offline sample who were Internet rejectors. However, researchers soon realised that if they researched topics uncorrelated to the method of data collection (eg consumer goods) the results were remarkably similar between online and offline. A major breakthrough was probably the publication by Infratest Burke5 of the results of 50 online validations of their conventional BASES market potential tests. In 1998, the company recruited a panel of 6,000 online US citizens and parallel tested concept tests from a wide range of food, household and personal care products. The results were amazingly close,
& H E N R Y S T E W A R T P U B L I C AT I O N S 1 4 7 8 - 0 8 4 4 . I n t e r a c t i v e M a r k e t i n g . V O L . 4 N O . 2 . PP 156–169. OCTOB
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