News
December 2007
The Scotsman Publications finds the answers to key strategic questions
The Scotsman Publications which publishes The Scotsman, Edinburgh Evening News, Scotland on Sunday and scotsman.com, has completed a number of probing research projects both for internal strategic purposes but also for product development. Dianne Newman, Head of Research, Enterprise & Library Services utilised Snap’s in-house survey solution to answer key strategic questions including: ‘Is the Internet really a threat?’, ‘do people prefer broadsheet or tabloid?’ and ‘who chooses the front page?’ The feedback generated has given The Scotsman an invaluable insight into the industry and their readers, which has been influential in future strategic decisions. Read More
Worksheet on Analysing two surveys together
Merging surveys in Snap has become even easier using a database link. This worksheet tells you how to merge slightly different surveys and set up a derived variable to identify them for analysis. Read More
Tip of the month
You can move directly to a question or variable in the questionnaire, or the variables overview window, or the data entry window by pressing F4 and entering its name (e.g. q7).
US News
US - Training Dates
In-house Dates - 12 December & 9 January, Portsmouth, US
Make a New Year's resolution to get the most out of your survey software in 2008 by attending one of in-house training days. Improve your skills and get fully proficient in designing, administering and analysing web surveys. A full day course costs just $500 so call one of the team to find out further information or to book yourself a place.
US prize draw winner
We are pleased to announce the winner of our recent conference drawing. Congratulations to Mingguang Xu, Ph.D. of the University of Georgia who has won the latest version of Snap ProNet. This will enable his organisation to conduct evaluation, satisfaction or internal surveys using paper, telephone, web or email.
UK News
ASC Conference papers now available
Papers from the Association for Survey Computing Conference in September are now available online. The conference - The Challenges of a Changing World, included a range of exciting papers on innovative techniques and new approaches by key figures within the Market Research industry, including Snap users and Snap Surveys directors Peter Wills and Steve Jenkins.
One of these insightful papers was titled ‘Watch What I Do: Using graphical input controls in web surveys’ by Nicola Stanley, Managing Director of Silver Dialogue and a long-standing Snap user and Dr Steve Jenkins, Snap’s Technical Director. The paper considers the deployment and use of graphical image-based controls for collecting web survey responses. It compares the merits of graphical control surveys in terms of respondent experience when completing the survey, plus the design effort required.
To challenge the added value of using graphical control scales within a survey, they developed experimental surveys using a range of designs, including continuos and stepped sliders, drag and drop and one/two dimensional maps. Overall, they discovered no significant disadvantage in using graphical scales, plus the respondents from the panel found the graphical inputs acceptable, enjoyed completing the survey and were looking forward to completing more in the future. Therefore, their conclusion was that graphical controls could improve response rates and levels of interest. Limited selections of slider controls are already available within Snap software but a wider range will be incorporated in future versions.
Tim Macer concludes ‘the paper gave convincing evidence of the benefits of moving away from essentially text-based online surveys, to questions based on graphical and interactive elements, in terms of improved respondent engagement.’
Read more on this paper and others presented here.
The University of Aberdeen use Snap software to conduct an experiment on web surveys
John Lemon, Student Liaison Officer & Survey Co-ordinator at the University of Aberdeen, recently conducted an experiment on ‘The effect of reminder intervals on the response rate of web surveys’ using Snap software. He presented a poster display and paper on this experiment at a recent SPSS conference in the US and the ASC Conference in September.
The University has set guidelines on the timings of surveys, which means that only 22 weeks are available per year for surveys to be conducted. In addition, due to the timeline for each web-based survey including the two reminders, it meant that realistically only 7 surveys could be run per year. After examination of the pattern of responses, John realised that the majority of responses are made within 36 hours of the initial invitation or reminder. This, coupled with evidence from previous years that showed reducing the time intervals might be the best approach, prompted the experiment. To test this theory, two identical copies of five surveys were created and mounted on the same web server, using Snap software. One was set using the original 1-week intervals between reminders and survey closure and one with a shorter interval time period. The experiment’s results proved that shorter time intervals between email reminders has little effect on the overall response rate and in fact shows a slight improvement for some surveys.
Job Opportunities
The London based marketing team currently has an opening for a Marketing Executive. Click here for further information and application details.
Benelux News
New Hospital SurveyPaks released
Snap-Benelux, our distributor for the Benelux countries, has released two new SurveyPak questionnaires based on patient safety in hospitals - incident registration and safety culture (this one is the well known questionnaire, in English, developed by the AHRQ www.ahrq.gov ). These include professionally phrased questions and formatting. In addition, the following related questionnaires including analyses and reporting are also available: patient satisfaction, staff satisfaction and palliative care, plus resident satisfaction, mentor and service flats that are typically intended for Care Homes. All these currently exist in Dutch and French but can of course be translated into English.
For more information click here, and/or contact leo.schreurs@snap-benelux.be.