Why online?
Online interviews with online panels are nowadays viewed by the industry to be on a par with the conventional data collection methods. Because of the many merits of online research – which extend beyond financial savings – the area is of growing importance.
In recognition of the fact that the method is not the best for every survey, we are maintaining a strong offline research department (CATI, CAPI etc).
For many surveys however, online research represents a good choice of method.
Responses are more authentic
A range of studies have shown that participants in an online interview situation answer considerably more freely, with more detail and more authentically than they would in conventional interview situations. We attribute this result to two common occurrences during telephone or face-to-face interviews; firstly that the interviewee tends to want to finish the questionnaire as quickly as possible, and secondly that the interviewer tends to accept the first answer given rather than prompting for more information ("Can you think of anything else?").
Online samples are more representative
This is especially true for surveys which focus on objects with little or no relation to internet use. In other words: There are no plausible arguments to suggest that internet users have different opinions about chocolate bars as internet non-users. The fact that only internet users take part in the test presents no problem. In fact, we can assume that an online sample will better represent the population than a telephone or face-to-face survey. Two reasons:
a) To a considerable extent, online surveys are completed in the workplace. In contrast to interviews conducted by telephone, the online method will reliably reach more of the working population.
b) The interviewee can decide when to complete the questionnaire. This eliminates the drop-out rate which occurs due to lack of time. This drop-out rate with conventional methods consists predominantly of the socially stronger, the workforce and highly involved groups of the survey population – a problem compensated for in online research.
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