Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- 1 The Importance of Design for Web Surveys
- 2 The Basic Building Blocks
- 3 Going Beyond the Basics: Visual and Interactive Enhancements to Web Survey Instruments
- 4 General Layout and Design
- 5 Putting the Questions Together to Make an Instrument
- 6 Implementing the Design
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
6 - Implementing the Design
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- 1 The Importance of Design for Web Surveys
- 2 The Basic Building Blocks
- 3 Going Beyond the Basics: Visual and Interactive Enhancements to Web Survey Instruments
- 4 General Layout and Design
- 5 Putting the Questions Together to Make an Instrument
- 6 Implementing the Design
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
There's many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.
So, we have a well-designed and carefully tested Web survey ready to go. How do we actually implement the survey to collect the data in which we are so interested? This chapter deals with a variety of design issues related to the process of data collection. I do not address technical issues such as Web hosting, database management, CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts to execute the survey, and so on. Rather, I focus on issues of design such as the invitation to participate, the use of incentives or other inducements to do so, the login and authentication process, the follow-up of nonrespondents and partial respondents, and so on. The focus in many of the preceding chapters was on reducing measurement error. In this chapter, the attention is more on reducing nonresponse or increasing the number of sample persons who start – and finish – the survey. No matter how well the instrument is designed, if it is poorly executed, the desired respondents may not even get to the questions that were so carefully developed.
This chapter is organized around the sequence of events that typically occur in a Web survey, from the initial invitation to the completion of the survey and then any follow-up that may be necessary. Following this, I discuss the use of incentives in Web surveys.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Designing Effective Web Surveys , pp. 304 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008