Email Survey

Email Survey Procedures

Similar to a Web survey, a survey conducted via email most typically uses electronic mail to contact members of the sample. With Web surveys, the user is directed in the contact email to a Web site containing the questionnaire. With email surveys, the contact email contains the survey questionnaire and no survey Website is referenced. Generally, the email survey approach takes one of three forms: (1) a software file attached to the email, (2) an electronic document attached to the email, or (3) questionnaire text embedded in the email itself.

Some commercial vendors have offered survey software that will attach an executable file to each email sent to sample members. The file is downloaded by the user and executed on his or her personal computer; a software program then prompts the user to fill out the questionnaire and records their responses. A more common and simpler approach is to attach a copy of the questionnaire to the email as an electronic document, using a common format such as Microsoft Word. Users open the document, type their responses in the appropriate places, save the document on their computer, and then reattach the document to an email that is sent back to the surveyor. Alternatively, a text or HTML (hypertext markup language) copy of the questionnaire can be embedded directly in the contact email. By hitting “reply” in their email software, users create a copy of the questionnaire into which their responses can be typed. Responses are given either by inserting Xs into a set of brackets by the appropriate response for text emails or by marking radio buttons for HTML emails, and the email is sent to the surveyor.

Emails from respondents are then collected and entered into a database, either by hand or through the use of survey software. With both the electronic document approach and the embedded text approach, users are often given the option of printing off the questionnaire and mailing it back to the surveyor via regular mail. Research indicates that few respondents use this option when it is offered.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Email surveys share many of the same advantages and disadvantages of Web surveys. For example, email surveys are less costly than other survey modes, because of the lack of printing, postage, or interviewer costs, and they enable the surveyor to collect data quite rapidly. Thus, the potential for interviewer effects are eliminated due to self-administration of the survey. Email surveys also share the same coverage issues as Web surveys, in that not everyone has an email address (nor are there national directories of email addresses), as well as the same measurement error issues, arising from the format of the [Page 232]questionnaire appear differently on different computer and software configurations. There is also evidence that respondents to email surveys may differ from respondents to mail surveys in terms of having higher socioeconomic status; similar results have been found for Web surveys.

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