The Benefits Of Conducting Online Questionnaires

The benefits of conducting online questionnaires are well known, and they are the reason why they are a favourite tool of obtaining feedback from customers. They are suitable for collecting data quickly and in large volumes, at low costs. The data collected by means of online questionnaires can be analysed continuously and thus increase analysis speed and accuracy. They are also easy and fast to update during their pilot phase.

Costs savings are another benefit of online questionnaire software offered online. The costs are much lower than the costs of questionnaires associated with surveys on the site – there are no expenses for paper, phone conversations, postage, or printing. What is even more important, the expenses for venue renting, travel expenses and time are saved by means of conducting online questionnaires.

Flexible design also belongs to the list of advantages of questionnaires offered online. Conducting online questionnaires have the advantage of making extensive use of web design to capture the attention and appeal to respondents filling them. Furthermore, they can be included into a dedicated website which can serve as a platform providing more information about the researchers and their project. Among the benefits of flexible design it is worth mentioning the capabilities for multilingual format.

Data accuracy is a feature that is especially important with online questionnaires. Because responses can be inserted automatically into databases, spreadsheets, statistical packages, the automated data processing reduces the opportunities for human errors and enables the automatic validation of the data. With the prerequisites for low data entry errors, data accuracy is an important benefit of questionnaires filled online. Survey response rates, in general, tend to be higher with online surveys than any other method.

Easy access to the research populations is very important for questionnaires offered online. The direct access to target populations and specific subgroups within populations, such as specific ethnicities, family structures, etc. simplifies the process of questioning respondents and helps to contact physically or socially isolated groups.

Anonymity is a benefit which is especially attractive to people filling online questionnaires. Anonymity can be very helpful when respondents are asked on certain topics. For example, anonymity enables respondents to be more willing to answer socially threatening questions when they are asked as part of questionnaires filled online, compared to onsite surveys or surveys on the phone. In the filling of self administered questionnaires offered online, there is no tangible presence of the researcher opposite the respondent, and the confidence of being anonymous enables respondents to give truthful answers.

Finally, respondent acceptability is a great benefit of conducting online questionnaires. Because such questionnaires take little time to complete, and each respondent can choose the time and place when and where they can fill their answers, and questionnaires offered online are extremely popular.

There is a vast scope of benefits which make online questionnaires favourite tools for researchers and a preferred type of questionnaires for respondents. Their major benefits comprise the capability for performing market research at reduced costs, faster and cheaper, with automated gathering and processing of information. They are more accurate, as respondents enter their answers directly into the system, and faster to analyse.