Reasons for Conducting a Telephone Survey:

Your sample needs to be representative of the population as a whole.

Your target group is not Internet oriented and/or may not have an E-Mail address or web connection, as in a small business, etc.,

You do not have Opt-In E-Mail addresses, but you do have telephone numbers.

You need to screen for a specific person in a company, i.e. the VP of Finance.

You have a very long or very complicated survey that may also require a live interviewer for prompting, clarification and probing.

You have many open ended questions.

You have a small sample size (10-30) that would not justify the programming costs.

You have to locate the person by telephone, screen them and have only a few questions to ask; therefore it saves time and money to simply ask the questions while you have them on the phone

Reasons for Conducting an Online or Web Based Survey:

You already have a customer list or Opt-In E-mail list, which would mean $$ would be saved in having no telephone recruiting cost.

Your target group is Internet savvy, has E-Mail addresses and is accustomed to using the Internet.

Your target group has a high interested in participating i.e. membership lists.

You have a graphic, plan or presentation that could be viewed easily on a web site thereby saving the cost and time of printing and postage.

A visual presentation of the questions themselves would be easier to understand than hearing the questions (audio).

You want them to give you long detailed answers to open ended questions. Note: you would loose the aid of probing techniques.

You need certain types of information; confidential, embarrassing or information they may not have readily available to them.

You have a tracking study that will continue for a length of time allowing the online survey to just stay up and be used indefinitely, thereby saving new setup and programming costs.

Pluses & Minuses of Internet Research:

Eight Pluses:

1-Respondents can complete the survey at their leisure.
2-Respondents often have a higher interest in participating, once they agree.
3-Speed -- 90% of results arrive within the first 2 days ? 30% -50% in the first few hours!
4-Geographical issues: respondents can be local or world wide.
5-Costs can be lower but not always.
6-Can be easier to find certain hard to find respondents.
7-Relative anonymity of the Internet and Internet customs may produce more detailed, thoughtful, honest answers which they might be reluctant to tell an interviewer in person.
8-Many more persons are online today.

Eight Minuses:

1-Relative anonymity can produce more readily expresses negative answers!
2-Requires careful screening to verify respondents are who they say they are.
3-Sample is not project able and therefore is more qualitative than quantitative in nature.
4-Length of respondent