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Online Research

Maven has a great deal of experience in administering online questionnaires, for companies such as Shell, Mercedes Benz, Vodafone, Estée Lauder, DTI, St Johns Ambulance & Lloyds TSB. Please visit our www.maven-web.co.uk website for additional information relating to online surveys and our multi-modal data collection offering.

Online research – benefits

• Cost effective data collection method – once the questionnaire is set up, the data collection element can be conducted at low cost.
• Respondents are generally more objective in their answers – there is no interviewer influence and respondents do not feel that they need to give the ‘expected/correct’ answer to the interviewer
• Not intrusive – respondents complete the surveys at their own pace and at a time suitable to them. This can have beneficial effects on response rates and the quality of answers
• Speed of response – responses can be received much quicker than by post. This is particularly the case if the sample group are likely to check their emails on a daily basis as they normally do so when they have time to respond
• Quality of response – respondents tend to give more articulate responses to open-ended questions
• International research – there are no international boundaries to a web survey. A survey can be set up in multiple languages, allowing the respondent to choose their own language for completion
• Technical benefits – sound, graphics and video clips can be incorporated as stimuli into the questionnaire
• Automation – data is collated automatically, enabling real time reporting possible if required

Issues for consideration

• Target audience – depending on the research objectives and the target audience, web based collection may not be suitable as not everyone has access to and regularly uses the Internet. Basing a sample purely on Internet users may bias the profile that you need to achieve.
• Identifying Internet users – email addresses are limited and are not always reliable. Web based research must be conducted within data protection regulations and individuals need to have agreed prior to the research that they are happy to be contacted by email for market research purposes.
• Understanding the sample – knowing who exactly is participating in research can be difficult. Email addresses alone give little indication as to the type of person using e-mail.
• Technical restrictions – due to different ways and speeds of accessing the Internet and different browser software and settings, questionnaire pages may take varying lengths of time to download and page layout and formatting may vary.

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