Web Based Surveys are the most commonly used method for data collection these days. It helps to fight against the constraint of paucity of time, long distances and also helps to largely eliminate human error. Some of the rules for preparing online questionnaires are
Short is the key: The survey takers get alienated by long questionnaires. The researcher must ensure to limit the number of questions to 25. In the situation, when surveys are much longer, people tend to abandon them and then it becomes difficult to use them. To add to it, the same respondent may escape from responding to any future endeavour from your end to fill the questionnaire. A status bar at the top of each page is very advantageous and certainly helps in letter the survey taker know how far or close they are from finishing the survey.
Restrain from Open Ended Questions: People often want to zip through the questionnaire and if too many open ended questions are there which require typing of answers then it goes against the speed of the respondent. Close ended questions that could be responded with a click on a button do a much better job as compared to these ones. The depth of analysis for closed ended or open ended questions does not differ much.
Persistent: In the case of online surveys it is perfectly fine to send more than one invite to a prospective respondent, more so to those who have earlier shown interest and willingness to participate. However, permission from people is very important.
Patience: This is the last but the most important rule for online surveys. Researchers, particularly business researchers tend to get very impatient when the results do not come right away.
It could be concluded that, online surveys do reduce a lot of work. The designing and administering of these web based surveys takes much longer and when the results pour in, the interpretation of online surveys is all the more time consuming. There should be one picked person to shepherd the process is what the experts often indicate
I used google sheets and monkey survey to put my questionnaire online and they were really helpful, I just shared the link with my resources and tehy filled the details in no time.
Thanks!!
Yes, keep your questionnaire closed ended as much as possible as for online surveys, respondents might seldom invest time in open-ended questions.
Could someone tell me about when a 5 point Likert scale is suitable and when 7 point is suitable? I often get confused among the two.