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Rachel McCalla
or by any new technology” (McLuhan 1965) cited in (Miller and Dickson 2001) The importance that the ‘medium’ plays in communication has been long discussed amongst academics and practitioners alike. Schonlau, M., R. D. J. Fricher, et al. (2001) argue that there are a number of circumstances in which the online survey may prove to be a useful approach. These can be summarised as when: 1. ..the survey can be conducted with a convenience sample often the respondents self select themselves into the survey. 2. ..the survey is being conducted in an organisation that has a list of e-mail addresses for the target population contact being made initially by e-mail. 3. ..the target population represents a small slice of the total population use or respondents from a pre-recruited panel that can be targeted directly. 4. ..the sample size is moderately large
What is the most appropriate method to use?
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taking advantage of the lower marginal cost per respondent. 5. ..the survey contains questions of a particularly sensitive nature - distance between researcher and respondent reduces chance of reflexivity bias. 6. ..the survey contains a large number of important open-ended questions - data automatically entered and there is evidence that respondents write more. 7. ..the survey is a multimedia survey or contains interactive elements - there is no other way to use technological innovations at a reasonable cost These characteristics are fairly general and do not particularly assist the new researcher when setting out on their journey to evaluate all the research technique options and come to some decision about which techniques to use and through which medium. Essentially it is a question of balancing numerous research priorities (see Figure 1.0).
A question of balancing numerous priorities…. Internet- based
The overriding objective of maximising the response rate from a target population - with high quality responses. In achieving this, there are often many other considerations……...
A desire to speed up the process and reduce administrative costs for the researcher…...
Snail mail
Snail mai l survey Online survey
E-mail su rvey
A desire to implement technological innovations……...
E-mail-based
A desire to communicate with respondents in their preferred mode of choice…..
Figure 1.0: Balancing research priorities However, in order to make a valid assessment of priorities one must first understand some of the benefits and pitfalls that might be encountered along the journey.
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