Читать книгу Handbook of Web Surveys - Jelke Bethlehem - Страница 35

The survey is carried out within the survey research activities now provided from the CASI (Center for Statistical Analyses and Surveys/Interviewing, Centro Analisi Statistiche e Indagini) seated at the ex‐Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Informatics of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Bergamo. The survey topics were the use of e‐commerce, the collaboration with other enterprises and/or the belonging to groups, the markets, and the employment. The questionnaire was kept simple (6 pages of 40 substantial items, 1 welcome page, and 1 final page) and asked mainly for qualitative answers or for percentage data.

The survey addressed to about 2,000 firms of the provinces of Bergamo (used as pilot province), Brescia, Lecco, Varese, and Mantova (each province is in the Lombardy region in Italy) in the manufacturing and building sector. E‐mail addresses and stratification variables collection is from the administrative databases of the Chamber of Commerce for the Bergamo province and from a Unioncamere (Union of Chambers of Commerce) database for the other provinces.

The overall response rate was 21.9%, which is quite high considering that due to the quality of the list, 12% of the follow‐up contacts were explicitly wrong e‐mail addresses. Response rates by size of the firm, legal form, and economic activity did not differ very much. It is interesting to note that for small firms (less than 20 employees), the response rate was quite high compared with the other firm sizes.

Data collection took place, for the first wave, in spring 2000 and has been carried out according to the following steps:

 Invitation to participate in the survey sent by e‐mail (survey presentation letter, a survey report as incentive, and other related advantages have been prospected).

 A link of the individual firm address for completion of the questionnaire was included in the presentation letter. Therefore no identification code (id) and no password was required.

 Three e‐mail reminders were sent (first reminder 14 days after the survey follow‐up and the two reminders with weekly periodicity). Mainly for research purposes a fourth e‐mail remainder was sent after the end of the survey period. As described in literature, the three reminders were effective in improving the response rate; the forth reminder did not have an effect.

A web survey questionnaire consists of one or more web pages. Respondents have to visit the website in order to answer the survey questions. Note that, at early times of web surveys, the Internet was only deployed as a medium to transport the empty questionnaire to the respondent and to transport the completed questionnaire back from the respondent to the survey agency. For example, a simple questionnaire form is implemented in an Excel spreadsheet. The respondents receive the spreadsheet as an attachment of an e‐mail. After they have downloaded this electronic form, they fill it in on their own computer. Completed questionnaire return is also by e‐mail. This type of survey is called an Internet survey, because it uses the Internet in a much broader sense, than just the HTML pages of the World Wide Web.

This chapter describes the various forms of online data collection, from simple e‐mail surveys to advanced web surveys. It shows how to use web surveys for different target populations, for cross‐sectional data collection, and for longitudinal data collection (panels). It discusses the main reasons for online data collection, the advantages and disadvantages, areas of application, and specific related problems.