Hello Amy,
I use www.surveymonkey.com for my web surveys - yes, I hear the chuckling over the name.... However, it's a great and professional web survey tool. It's also very affordable at only $20 per month which you can renew automatically and quit whenever you want. For a year it's $110 cheaper than the nonprofit rate for Zoomerang, and much cheaper if you only need it for a few months. They have a free version but it really limits the types of questions you can ask and what you can do with the data so I think the minimal fee is worth it.
I gather demographic information when I collect email addresses for my surveys, then link an ID number to the email when I import the list into surveymonkey.com. Since surveymonkey tracks each respondent individually (they get their own unique url for the web survey) I can see whether those who do the survey are a sub sample of those invited to participate, and whether they are representative of the aquarium's visitation in general.
For those who want to know more about web surveys there is an excellent book I suggest people check out: Conducting Research Surveys via E-mail and the Web, at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1480/. It dispels some of the myths of web surveys (e.g., they can't be representative, people don't answer open-ended questions, etc.) as well as giving lots of good hints about increasing response rates and designing web surveys. A must have if you're doing or considering web surveys.
Steve
Steven Yalowitz, Ph.D.
Audience Research Specialist
Monterey Bay Aquarium
886 Cannery Row
Monterey, CA 93940
phone: 831-647-6844
fax: 831-644-7583
email: [log in to unmask]
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Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 08:54:05 -0500
From: Amy Cunningham <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Online surveys
Hello and Happy New Year,
Have any of you conduted online surveys at your insittution? Another
non-profit I haved worked with just sent me (and hundreds of other people, I
presume) an online survey about their programs. It is powered by
Zoomerang:
"the world's premier online survey software, provides a powerful,
streamlined alternative for organizations needing to conduct accurate,
comprehensive surveys with a minimum of cost and effort. Zoomerang is an
easy to use, Internet-based survey tool allowing customers to design and
send surveys and analyze the results in real time." (from their website).
As someone who has conducted small scale surveys at museums I have worked
for, this seems like a potential time saver. I would appreciate any
feedback or experiences on this that you might share.
Thanks in advance,
Amy Cunningham
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