Page 117 - DMGT404 RESEARCH_METHODOLOGY

Unit 6: Primary Data and Questionnaire

Advantages Notes

 Web page surveys are extremely fast. A questionnaire posted on a popular Web site can
gather several thousand responses within a few hours. Many people who will respond to
an email invitation to take a Web survey will do so the first day, and most will do so
within a few days.

 There is practically no cost involved once the set up has been completed.
 Pictures can be shown. Some Web survey software can also show video and play sound.
 Web page questionnaires can use complex question skipping logic, randomizations and
other features which is not possible with paper questionnaires. These features can assure
better data.
 Web page questionnaires can use colors, fonts and other formatting options not possible
in most email surveys.
 A significant number of people will give more honest answers to questions about sensitive
topics, such as drug use or sex, when giving their answers to a computer, instead of to a
person or on paper.
 On an average, people give longer answers to open-ended questions on Web page
questionnaires than they do on other kinds of self-administered surveys.
Disadvantages

 Current use of the Internet is far from universal. Internet surveys do not reflect the
population as a whole. This is true even if a sample of Internet users is selected to match
the general population in terms of age, gender and other demographics.
 People can easily quit in the middle of a questionnaire. They are not as likely to complete
a long questionnaire on the Web as they would be if talking with a good interviewer.

 Depending on your software, there is often no control over people responding multiple
times to bias the results.

6.4.6 Mail Questionnaire

Mail questionnaire is a paper questionnaire, which is sent to selected respondents to fill and post
filled questionnaire back to the researcher.

Advantages

1. Easier to reach a larger number of respondents throughout the country.
2. Since the interviewer is not present face to face, the influence of interviewer on the
respondent is eliminated.

3. This is the only kind of survey you can do if you have the names and addresses of the
target population, but not their telephone numbers.
4. Mail surveys allow the respondent to answer at their leisure, rather than at the often
inconvenient moment they are contacted for a phone or personal interview. For this
reason, they are not considered as intrusive as other kinds of interviews.
5. Where the questions asked are such that they cannot be answered immediately, and needs
some thinking on the part of the respondent, the respondent can think over leisurely and
give the answer.

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