The online or e‐survey: a research approach for the ICT age

Abstract

E‐technology as a basis of research is now being more widely considered as potential respondents can be drawn from an ever widening audience. Early work by others has shown that many respondents are keen to use the medium and that response rates are generally higher than by conventional approaches. This article summarizes the experience of researchers who have contacted all participants in a major training and development initiative for newly appointed head teachers in England and Wales. All participants were asked to complete an online survey including closed, open and semi‐structured questions. The 40% response rate was higher than for postal questionnaires and the space flexibility of the e‐survey yielded a considerable amount of data to the open questions which is normally limited by design constraints in conventional surveys. Results were analysed using Excel, SPSS and Sphinx programmes. The approach offers a worthwhile means of securing opinion on process, content and philosophical issues but is less effective in securing more complex, detailed and structured quantitative data. The open nature of response does not prescribe what the evidence will be but provides an opportunity for conclusions to grow from the evidence offering a truly grounded approach.

Notes

1. Hyper Text Markup Language—the simplest form of code understood by most Internet browsers.

2. Typically 50KB for the form, a further 8KB for university and college logos, form background. Load time should be a few seconds for the majority of users.

3. Currently version 6.0.

4. Currently version 7.1.