Online vs. Phone Surveys

Hi Elliot: The challenge with online surveys is that they tend to be less representative than phone surveys. That is, we tend to not have as much control over who is completing the survey which can skew our participants toward those who are most interested in the topic. One way around this is to combine the two types of surveys. In this hybrid format you still begin by calling individuals (which enhances representativeness), but we then give the participant the opportunity to either do the survey over the phone or online. This hybrid approach can dramatically reduce costs but shores about the quality of the information obtained by enhancing the likelihood of that participants being representative of our target audience. HTH.

Best, Doug

Doug McKenzie-Mohr
Environmental Psychologist
McKenzie-Mohr & Associates Inc.
http://www.cbsm.com

This is such an interesting question. I've used both in the past, and usually, my decision about which to use came down to my budget. However, I think by asking yourself about the information you need, and the demographics of your audience, you may be able to figure out what is the best tool to gather the information you need.

One of the advantages of phone surveys is that you can screen people by demographic information to make sure you get a representative sample (if you have the budget). Screening for demographics means that you have to make more calls, so it is more expensive. If you don't have the funding to do that, then your phone survey will very likely skew older. You can also screen for demographics in an online quiz, but it's a little harder to know exactly who's answering your questions.

The best response rate I've had for phone surveys was when I didn't use a call-center to place the calls, and instead, made the calls in-house. Needless to say, this was a project of a relatively small scale, but the personal touch of being able to say I was calling from the local University Extension office made a huge difference when compared to a phone survey I did just a few months later using a call-center.

I've had some great success using online surveys (especially when using boosted facebook ads to solicit responses). I find that the results of phone surveys usually offer more depth of information so prefer online surveys when my questions are not as involved.

Here are articles on online vs phone surveys:
http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/themes/ucdavis/pubs/download_pdf.php?id=1666
http://www.marketconnectionsinc.com/eNewsletter/telephone-vs-online-surveys-which-is-better.html
http://www.irss.unc.edu/content/pdf/fricker%20poq%202005%20experimental%20comparison.pdf
http://papers.wybowiersma.net/abstracts/Wiersma,Wybo,The_validity_of_surveys_online_and_offline.pdf
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDUQFjACOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F228461859_Online_vs_telephone_surveys_Methodological_issues_for_gambling_research%2Flinks%2F0c96052556638d31b1000000.pdf&ei=ehG4VMTpBI22yAT__IDYBQ&usg=AFQjCNGMAccsgNHHm2unv-1GUDXsN75d5A

Cammy


Cammy Mills
Outreach and Education Coordinator
Kitsap Public Works, Stormwater Division
United States

Hi Elliot

We faced the same dilemna here in New Zealand recently. When we looked at the demographics we found that more and more people in New Zealand no longer have a landline and instead only use a mobile phone. This is particularly true for younger people and those on low incomes. As for our survey we were very interested to gather the views of younger people we chose to do an online survey. However we also set quotas for age gender ethnicity etc to match the national population thus ensuring that we had the right mix of people. So when people started the survey online there were screening questions to ensure that the right people were answering the survey. In terms of price comparison the research company could phone around 200 people for a similar price for an online survey of 1,000 so that was another factor that influenced our decision.



Jenny Marshall
Post graduate student
massey university
New Zealand