Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Having considered the public-face and behind-the-scenes aspects of email,
now let us look at how email might be used for social research.
Using email for surveys
Manypeopleuseemailtodistributesurveyseitherinthebodyofanemailmes-
sageorasanattachment.Whilethisisfine,ithaslimitedadvantagesoversend-
ing a survey through the post or asking people to complete a survey in a
particular location. Essentially, it provides easier access to a wide audience and
savesonpostage.Thereare,however,afewpitfallstoconsiderwhensendingsur-
veysinemailandexpectingcompletedsurveysinareply.Surveydocumentsare
often formatted in a certain way to enhance the categories of questions or the
choice of answers. Since mail message are plain text and do not always preserve
formattingbecauseoflinefolding,itbecomestemptingtosendthesurveyasan
attached word processing document or PDF file. But this relies on the recipient
havingthesoftwarenecessarytomodifythesedocumentsastheyrespondtothe
question,andthentheyhavetoattachittoareplyemail.Thisisgenerallymore
workthanshouldbeexpectedofasurveytarget.Ifthesurveyissentasplaintext
inthemessage,theauthorofthesurveyneedstotakesomecarethattheanswer
sections are obvious, and that the recipient can easily enter answers into a reply
messagewithoutdrasticallyalteringtheappearanceofthesurvey.
Another major benefit lost when emailing a survey rather than creating an
online survey and emailing a link is data entry. Emailed equivalents to paper
surveysrequiremanualdataentry,thoughsomeassistancecanbeprovidedby
text-parsingtools.Mostoftenthesetoolsarecustomwrittenscriptsinperland
require some programming expertise.
Thealternativetoemailingthesurveyandreadingthereplyistoputasurvey
uponawebsiteanduseemailtosendaURLlinktothewebsiteandarequest
for the recipient to visit the web site. The web server and associated programs
canthenbeusedtoautomatethedataentry.Onenote,however:itisconsidered
riskytotheusertoclickonlinksinemailmessagesbecausescammersoftenuse
this to direct unaware users to web sites that download malware to the user's
computer. It is considered safer to copy the web address into the web browser
addresswindowusingcopyandpasteoperations.Anotherfactortoconsiderin
sending out a survey invitation is whether the wording for such an invitation is
similar to that used in spam messages. If the author does not take some care in
thewording,theinvitationmightwindupinmanyrecipients'junkmailfolders
without them ever seeing it. And another factor that is independent of which
technologyisusedtodistributeasurvey,isthatthelevelofresponsetosurveys
solicited by email is lower than more personal requests, and the respondents
will be more self-selected, and therefore bias may be introduced.
