Pros and Cons of Online Surveys

The most basic need of business persons is to conduct surveys in order to know public opinions about their products or services. Almost a decade ago, this practice was the most hectic as well as costly for the research personnel and for the companies who were providing funds. There was a dire need for a way to conduct market research which cost low, saved time and was easy to conduct.

With the ingression of technology in the research field, this problem has been solved and the solution came out in the form of ‘Online Surveys’. Nowadays, almost all of the manufacturing or service industries are using online methods in order to conduct surveys.

So, the very next question which comes to mind is:

Why do companies use this method of conducting surveys?

This method eases the life of research conductors in the following ways:

ü  It is easy to gather data through the internet because a vast population is connected with it around the globe.
ü  You can get a great quantity of data for your research so that the results would be reliable and generalizable.   
ü  Online surveys cost less as compared to the conventional methods of conducting research surveys.
ü   Conducting surveys online provide another plus point to the researcher by automatically inputting and handling of the acquired data.
ü  Response rates are more in online conducted surveys because the respondent is free to choose a time and can seek its availability for completing a survey.

While the advantages of online surveys are many, there are a few disadvantages as well. Cons of online surveys are:

ü  Respondents may not be qualified enough for the subject matter.
ü  Respondents may not feel comfortable to provide honest answers.
ü  Closed-ended questions may get lower validation rate as compared to other questions.
ü  Responses to certain questions may be unclear for the researcher as the respondent might have interpreted the option in a different way. 

Online surveys are the easiest way to conduct a research for your product or service. It saves you the time, money and the struggle to deal with a large number of data. But everything has their own advantages as well as disadvantages. These surveys can cause some problems for the researchers due to respondent’s behavior of random responding and limited knowledge about the survey topic.