Targeted questionnaire surveys

Questionnaire surveys require significant efforts to both develop the questionnaire and set up the survey but also to securing adequate number of responses. This presupposes that the contact details are clean and correct as much as possible and also that adequate attention is paid in making first contacts with people and persuade them to take part.

Making contacts and securing responses

• Once you have established the list of finished projects to address it is important that you get help by the partnership coordinator to contact all the project coordinators and persuade them to take part in the questionnaire survey and in turn to invite their participants to do the same.
• All potential respondents are usually contacted by e-mail. It is important to clearly explain the aim of the survey as well as mentioning the name of the partnership/project coordinator that is helping you in this task in order to i) create a first layer of trust and ii) get the people more involved because "named" or "recommended" by someone they know.
• The invitation should clearly state the aim of the survey and the estimated time of completion. You may use the following e-mail templates for contacting partnership/project coordinators.
• It is essential that the questionnaire is piloted with 4-5 individuals to test comprehensiveness, clarity of questions, etc. and also form a good idea about the time needed to complete it.
• Potential respondents are usually busy. It is important to highlight the actual duration of completing the survey so as to allow them make the time needed. It is also important to ensure that responses can be saved at any time without the need to complete the whole survey – this will allow them fill in some parts and come back for the rest when time allows.
• E-mail invitations should be personalised, i.e. Dr. Ms. Smith and NOT Dear Coordinator or Researcher etc. Invitations to potential respondents should allow around 2-3 weeks for people to respond to the survey.
• A week before the first deadline reminders should be sent as personal messages and ONLY targeted to those that have not participated yet although it would require more time to identify them rather than send another bulk message to all. The reminders should also allow some 2 weeks for completion. It makes sense to send up to 2 reminders – after there is little you can do to make people answer. Thus the time that the survey is 'open' adds up to 6 weeks in total.
• It is NOT good timing to send invitations very close to holiday breaks. Instead it is better to send them as soon as the holidays are finished so that people get them on top in their inbox when they are back.
• It is not unusual that people leave their institution or the project and that some 10-20% of the email invitations will bounce back due to wrong or non-identifiable email addresses. You can search for the 'lost' people on Google, or LinkedIn or check their recent publications, but you don’t need to bother if you achieve a high response rate, i.e. > 30% and a good share of projects represented in the survey i.e. >50%. Otherwise you need to locate and chase up people to respond to achieve such rates.
• As a rule of thumb, people involved in successful projects tend to reply more often/positively to surveys about their project. People involved in less successful projects/partnerships do not usually bother. However, they may be interested to briefly talk to you on the phone. Thus you may arrange an interview with them.

Collection of information

• It is important to address ALL project coordinators and participants and try to achieve high rates or responses, i.e. around 30% of respondents and 50% of represented projects.
• Questionnaires are built up on line using several free tools that are very easy to use. There will be plenty to have a look at if you google 'build questionnaire online tools' or surf specialised web pages or blogs.
• It is important to select a tool that will allow you to have Likert scale questions (e.g. 1 to 5 scales), multiple choice, YES/NO, drop-down menus, agree/disagree, etc. as well as open questions.
• The ERA-LEARN centralised project impact assessment template can be adjusted to fit your needs.