If you decided to do a survey, why, or under what conditions, would you choose t

Question

If you decided to do a survey, why, or under what conditions, would you choose to do a self-administered questionnaire as opposed to a face-to-face interview with subjects, a telephone survey, or an email survey? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type of survey? After you have answered this question, read the responses of your fellow students and discuss them. Ask questions about points you do not understand, explain why you think they are mistaken about some advantage or disadvantage, and add something that they did not mention.

Explanation / Answer

Interviews or self-completion questionnaires?

          Choosing between an interview and a selfcompleted questionnaire on which the respondent writes their answers is an important decision. Within these there are also choices to be made, each with advantages or disadvantages. Thus, interviews can be done face to face or by telephone. A questionnaire can be sent and returned by post or email, completed on the Web, or handed directly to the respondent who completes it on the spot and hands it back. Additionally, some interviews contain pauses for respondents to complete questionnaire sections, so that the resulting instrument is a combination of things. This can be particularly advantageous if a topic is felt to be socially embarrassing to discuss face to face and has been used, for example, in surveys of sexual behaviour.

         Interviews have certain advantages over self-completion questionnaires. The interviewer can explain questions that the respondent has not understood and can ask for further elaboration of replies (e.g. ‘Why do you say that?’). In general, being asked questions by a sympathetic listener is experienced as more rewarding by respondents than the chore of filling in a form for some anonymous researcher, so it is generally found that fewer people refuse to take part and more questions can be asked of each person. However, interviews are more time consuming for the researcher and it may be the case that interviewer bias, where the interviewer influences the replies by revealing their own opinions, can be avoided by self-completion questionnaires

Face-to-face survey:

Using face-to-face interviews as a means of data collection has a number of advantages and disadvantages. The main benefits are

There are however, some problems with face-toface approaches: v

Advantages

Disadvantages

Telephone Survey:

Telephone interviews using interview schedules are becoming increasingly efficient with developments in computer technology. Computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) systems are available and these provide clear instructions for the interviewer, display the interview schedule and allow electronic recording of responses as they are given. This cuts out the data entry part of survey research (i.e. transferring the responses from the interview schedule to the computer) because responses are recorded directly onto the computer. This makes CATI quick and cheap to use. There are other advantages associated with telephone interviews:

But telephone interviewing has disadvantages too:

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF EMAIL SURVEYS :

Advantages :

Disadvantages:

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