A series of verbal questions or a questionnaire used to gather data about consumer attitudes or behavior.
Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research. A survey may focus on opinions or factual information depending on its purpose, and many surveys involve administering questions to individuals. When the questions are administered by a researcher, the survey is called a structured interview or a researcher-administered survey. When the questions are administered by the respondent, the survey is referred to as a questionnaire or a self-administered survey.
There are several ways of administering a survey, including:
Telephone
- use of interviewers encourages sample persons to respond, leading to higher response rates.
- interviewers can increase comprehension of questions by answering respondents' questions.
- fairly cost efficient, depending on local call charge structure
- good for large national (or international) sampling frames
- cannot be used for non-audio information (graphics, demonstrations, taste/smell samples)
- three types:
- traditional telephone interviews
- computer assisted telephone dialing
- computer assisted telephone interviewing
Mail
- the questionnaire may be handed to the respondents or mailed to them, but in all cases they are returned to the researcher via mail.
- cost is very low, since bulk postage is cheap in most countries
- long time delays, often several months, before the surveys are returned and statistical analysis can begin
- not suitable for very complex issues
- no interviewer bias introduced
- large amount of information can be obtained: some mail surveys are as long as 50 pages
- response rates can be improved by using mail panels
- members of the panel have agreed to participate
- panels can be used in longitudinal designs where the same respondents are surveyed several
Online surveys
- can use web or e-mail
- web is preferred over e-mail because interactive HTML forms can be used
- often inexpensive to administer
- very fast results
- easy to modify
- response rates can be improved by using Online panels - members of the panel have agreed to participate
- if not password-protected, easy to manipulate by completing multiple times to skew results
- data creation, manipulation and reporting can be automated
- data sets created in real time
- some are incentive based
Personal in-home survey
- respondents are interviewed in person, in their homes (or at the front door)
- very high cost
- suitable when graphic representations, smells, or demonstrations are involved
- suitable for long surveys
- suitable for locations where telephone or mail are not developed
Personal mall intercept survey
- shoppers at malls are intercepted - they are either interviewed on the spot, taken to a room and interviewed, or taken to a room and given a self-administered questionnaire
- socially acceptable - people feel that a mall is a more appropriate place to do research than their home
- potential for interviewer bias
- fast
- easy to manipulate by completing multiple times to skew results
