Communication With Recipients Of A Web Based Evaluation Survey

A current method of conducting evaluation surveys is by using the World Wide Web as a delivery vehicle and computer programming to collect and process submitted responses. Benefits of this method include substantial savings in postal mailing costs, rapid access to survey assistance, and efficient data processing. However, evaluators must be mindful and prepared when embarking on the use of Webbased surveys. Our experiences are recounted in this article. “They [surveys] are relatively low in cost, geographically flexible, and can reach a widely dispersed sample simultaneously without the attendant problems of interviewer access or the possible distortions of time lag. . . .data can be procured more quickly, more abundantly, and more cheaply” (Kanuk & Berenson, 1975, p. 440). By the end of the twentieth century we saw an explosion of the use of the electronic polling method via surveys developed for the World Wide Web. Personal computer users with Internet access could find themselves bombarded with visual marketing tools designed to be eyecatching enticements to partake in an on-line survey. These surveys are quick, “anonymous,” and may become a part of that evening’s news. One might think the quoted statements above were in reference to these modern Web-based surveys. However, these remarks are from 25 years ago and concern postal mail surveys. The use of surveys is institutionalized as a standard means of gaining research and evaluation data. Virtually every academic, business, and political organization regularly employs survey techniques. For academic programs, where persons to be surveyed have known E-mail addresses and other contact information, the electronic survey offers what appears to be a major new avenue to quickly reach out and collect data. In our case, The Evaluation Center (EC) at Western Michigan University is working under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct an evaluation project. The overall mission of this evaluation project is to assess the impact and effectiveness of NSF’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program and to provide technical assistance for ongoing evaluative efforts (Gullickson & Lawrenz, 1998). The first phase of this evaluation was 1 This study was conducted with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. P ge 679.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2001, American Society for Engineering Education focused on building a Web-based survey system that would help NSF keep abreast of ATE program activities and related outcomes. We knew the targeted respondents for our survey. The information we were to derive from them was intended to be a fair illustration of the ATE project sites represented by this specific group of people. This article is presented as a brief look at what happened on the communications front of this evaluative effort. We thought it would be useful for our future survey efforts to track the steps we took and the amount and nature of messages and queries we received from persons sampled. Our findings indicate that our level of communication with survey respondents most likely exceeded the norm for survey follow-up communications. We focused on two issues: • the nature of interactions when persons are presented with a Web-based survey and correlating E-mail communications • the relative benefits of Web-based surveys in comparison to postal mail surveys