Web‐Based Surveys: Not Your Basic Survey Anymore

Web-based surveys are not new to the library environment. Although such surveys began as extensions of print surveys, the Web-based environment offers a number of approaches to conducting a survey that the print environment cannot duplicate easily. Since 1994, the author and others have conducted national surveys of public library Internet connectivity [1–10]. For the 1997 survey, the studies experimented with a Web-based survey that was implemented in conjunction with the printed survey form mailed to public libraries. Being new to the library community in general and the study in particular, fewer than 10 percent of responses made use of the Web survey, and, admittedly, the survey form was simply a Web-based version of the printed survey. Moreover, the experimental survey followed the same sampling strategies and was essentially a broadcast design approach; that is, all libraries received the same announcement indicating the availability of the survey online as well. But today’s Web-based survey environment is substantially different from that of eleven years ago. The tools that exist today not only enable researchers to create highly functional and innovative tools, but they also allow researchers to micro-target respondents. One can, in effect, create multiple surveys simultaneously in ways that have been unfeasible until now. The 2008 Public Library Funding and Public Access Technology survey, funded by the American Library Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (conducted from September 2008 to November 2008) is an example of a highly customized Web-based survey that affords an entirely new approach to survey research. For those interested, more information regarding the study is available at http://www.ala.org/plinternet funding; current and previous survey findings are available at http:// www.ii.fsu.edu/plinternet.