An online questionnaire is one form of data collection in a quantitative study. Online surveys have many advantages over other market research. Let`s investigate how to make a survey in the online format and what benefits you can get.
Common advantages
Users will get the following benefits if they make free surveys with the help of automated platforms:
- Access to a large number of respondents. As a constantly growing and boundless environment, the Internet accommodates millions of users with various socio-demographic characteristics. All you need to access them is Internet access.
- The speed of the study. Online surveys reduce the time spent creating a survey, collecting data, and processing the results.
- Minimization of material costs. Conducting a survey online will allow you to reduce research costs, as it does not require the preparation of paper questionnaires and the training of interviewers.
- Automatic (semi-automatic) data processing. Sociologists who once manually processed stacks of paper questionnaires would envy the ability of a modern person to receive automatically processed survey results, eliminating processing errors instantly. If deeper processing is needed, statistical programs will come to the rescue.
- Constantly improving techniques. The development of technology and the desire for maximum automation of labour-intensive processes leads to the ever-growing possibilities of online surveys.
- High level of frankness of the respondents. The complete anonymity that online research can provide allows respondents to express their opinions more openly and honestly.
- Maximum comfort for the respondent. In the case of a personal survey, the interviewer “loses” the respondents by contacting them at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in bad weather, etc. Online research, in turn, allows the respondent to choose the time and place for the survey.
It is the main list of valuable benefits online survey has, and the spread of the Internet and technological development suggests that this list will soon no longer seem complete.