Electronic Surveys: Advantages and Disadvantages Over Traditional Print Surveys

Summary Overall, our initial venture to collect infor-mation via an electronic survey was fairlysuccessful. However, numerous questionsremain regarding future applications ofthis methodology. While we achieved com-parable response rates and aggregate mea-sures of data reliability/validity (means,standard deviations, and Cronbach’s alphaswere similar for the two data collectionmethods), we found the usage of electronicsurveys to be more time and effort inten-sive. We are currently in the process of per-forming more sophisticated data analysisto compare the relative data “quality” of Dr. Shawnee Vickery Broad Graduate School of ManagementN358 North Business ComplexMichigan State UniversityEast Lansing, MI 48824517-353-6381fax: 517-432-1112vickery@msu.edu 024681012141618201 - 3.99 4 - 5.99 6 - 7.99 8 - 9.99 10 -11.9912 -12.9913 -13.9914 -14.9915 -15.9916 -17.9918 -19.9920 -24.9925 -29.9930 -44.9945 andoverMinutesNumber of SurveysAverage Response Time = 17:53 minutes Figure 1: Distribution of response times for computer-based survey.