Online Surveys

Summary

A number of websites and software programs offer online survey capabilities, which allow communities or organizations to collect and analyze data more efficiently and cost-effectively than is possible with mail and phone surveys.

Tool Description

Surveys in general can be very helpful in latter stages of a visioning process or planning process to gather public feedback on proposals or ideas.  There are many different formats for questions and answers, which makes surveys useful for gathering many different types of information.  They can be used for nearly any topic or project stage, however, with some adjustment.  All surveys work best when they are tailored and carefully designed for a specific situation and target population; a significant body of literature addresses the best way to design surveys and how to avoid common problems.

Summary of Costs

Individuals and organizations have many options to choose from when designing a survey. Most online survey companies offer templates and wizards to create surveys yourself, while some act as consultants and can create in-depth, unique surveys designed for individual needs.
Survey Monkey, one of the most popular online survey companies, offers plans beginning at $19.95 per month.

Strengths

  • Online surveys have several advantages over mail or phone surveys: they require much less time, money, and effort to administer and analyze; they can include multimedia elements; and they can easily be closed, re-opened, and used again for future projects.
  • Surveys are one of the most popular and most flexible tools, since they can be designed around nearly any issue and tailored to reach any type of audience (though online surveys are more difficult to administer to the less tech-savvy populations).

Limitations

  • It may be hard to reach a representative group of people with surveys, and those who respond may not represent the sample pool; responses may not be honest or accurate; and in order to gain meaningful quantitative results, it is necessary to survey a large number of people.

Applications

  • Data analysis and collection
  • Decision-making
  • Evaluation and monitoring
  • Values identification
Submitted By: svannostrand
Last Updated: June 24, 2010, 4:45 pm

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