For this reason, many organizations opt to use a third-party research firm to assure respondents' confidentiality and the likelihood of getting higher quality responses. Manual data entry, the major source of error, is eliminated. And interpretation of hand-written comments is also eliminated. Data entry and transcribing of open-end comments is done by the respondents themselves. Once entered, the original data is maintained intact through analysis and reporting.
Clients receive typed comments along with the data.
Plus, comments can easily be sorted by demographic segment for clearer analysis. Effective communications with prospective participants and respondents before, during and after a survey can make a tremendous difference in response rates, quality of responses and attitudes towards participation in future surveys and about the sponsoring organization. The responses of these key groups can be analyzed and reported in advance of the return and processing of the paper questionnaire responses. When all responses are in, the e-Survey and paper questionnaire databases can be merged for overall reports and gap analysis. Copyright 1999, GuideStar Communications.