When done right, surveys are one of the most powerful ways to gain deep, actionable insights. There are many different ways to undertake a survey, and choosing the right research survey method is critical to ensuring that you get reliable insights that you can act on and that they are done efficiently.
When choosing the right survey method, you need to not only choose the method that will help provide the right insights but also the one that is the easiest and most attractive to the people you want to survey and that fits within your budget and available resources.
When the wrong method is selected, money is wasted, organisations damage their reputations with customers and communities, and the wrong decisions are made.
Surveys are one the main types of quantitative research methods. Quantitative research methods use a structured approach to collecting and analysing results to describe and explain the topic of interest. As the name suggests, quantitative research focuses on the quantity to provide insights. In comparison, qualitative research methods use a less structured approach that allows a more exploratory approach to getting insights.
The main types of quantitative methods in research include:
- Surveys
- Experiments and quasi-experiments
- Observation
- Operational data
- Customer data
- Customer feedback
- Secondary data analysis
The observation method is when data is actively collected for the research, while customer and operational data is passively collected as part of business operations. Account set-up and use and website data are common types of customer data. Customer feedback data that is more than an analysis of comments is quantitative if it analyses trends and causes.
Surveys excel in providing a lower-cost approach to flexibly and proactively capturing a diverse range of respondents’ experiences and allowing decision-makers to go beyond what is already captured.
Note: In survey research, ‘respondent’ means any person included in a survey and can include customers, community members, residents and any other person that ‘responds’ to a survey.
What are the main types of research survey methods?
There are six main types of research surveys. These surveys are split into two main types: Self-completion and administered surveys. The first three methods – online, kiosk and paper – are ‘self-completion’ methods because respondents can complete the survey independently. The last two types of surveys are administered surveys where a person asks the questions and records the answers.
- Online surveys
- Kiosk surveys
- Paper-based surveys
- IVR survey (interactive voice surveys)
- Telephone surveys
- In-Person (face-to-face surveys)
Depending on how they are implemented, AI-driven Chatbot surveys are the same as online surveys, with a sequential conversation that focuses on open-ended (free-text) questions. They are the online equivalent of an IVR when attached to the end of an online service or transaction.
Online surveys are currently one of the most common forms of research surveys. They are often cheaper than other methods to set up and run and can quickly be undertaken anywhere a person can access the internet. Besides cost and broad access, online surveys can also be dynamic, having questions reflect earlier responses or pre-loaded information so that only relevant questions are asked. Online surveys can be adapted to mobile or other devices and use sophisticated question designs and tools to engage better and uncover insights. The main downside to online surveys is that their ubiquity means people may feel less likely to want to complete them; they can attract AI bots; it is easy for people to give fake or poor-quality responses; without a person administering the survey, any ambiguity can be misinterpreted. The ease of setting up online surveys means there are a lot of poorly designed surveys that force a person to guess what is being asked.
Advantages: Fast, cost-effective, scalable, flexible, easily accessed, ability to show stimulus material and use advanced question types.
Disadvantages: Can easily attract low-quality and fake responses; easy for people to ignore; and high motivation needed for detailed answers.
Kiosk surveys are both online or saved on a device at a location. Unlike online surveys, a person can only access the survey through the kiosk. A kiosk is any device at a service or location. Examples are feedback surveys in service centres on touch screens or purpose-built machines. A kiosk survey has the advantage of being at the location where a person receives the service or experience—making it easy for a person to give immediate feedback about the service they just received. Downsides to kiosk surveys are that they may need to be short because customers will want to leave; customers may feel reluctant to give negative feedback when the person who served them is near; and customers may not be able to give feedback when a service requires multiple stages or is not resolved. These biases tend to give overly positive feedback.
Advantages: Close proximity to service or event for linking survey to a specific encounter; low cost per complete; and can generate high response rates due to ‘relevance proximity’.
Disadvantages: More complex to set up; costly if there is no existing kiosk; high bias potential in who completes the survey; incomplete service experience; and limited questioning depth and length.
Paper-based surveys, while uncommon, still have a place in some projects. Paper-based surveys include both mailed surveys and questionnaires made available at a location. In locations where internet access is not available or where setting up a kiosk is risky (theft or damage), a paper-based survey may provide the best access. The main downsides to paper-based surveys are the cost of printing and data processing. Even with surveys set up to be scanned, they require printing, scanning, and document destruction (especially if they have personally identifiable or sensitive information). Because people are unlikely to carry a pen, you need to provide a pen or pencil.
Advantages: Easy to do and accessible for people without an internet connection or difficulty in using devices.
Disadvantages: Expensive, not scalable, only for short and basic questions, and has a longer time turnaround.
IVR surveys are technically self-complete surveys. IVR surveys are mostly done at the end of customer service calls but can be done with an automated telephone call to a person. Both end-of-service and automated call IVR use a person’s voice – including AI-generated – to read out questions, and the person uses the phone number pad to give answers. A person can also provide voice-based responses that are then coded. IVR surveys, like kiosk surveys, are best used at the end of a service experience, along with very short surveys of up to four simple questions. Like kiosk surveys, they tend to generate positive biased responses and only reflect the most recent experience rather than the complete service.
Advantages: Cost-effective once set up and ability to link feedback to staff performance.
Disadvantages: Inflexible, limited insight does not reflect total customer experience and can only be used after a telephone-based service.
Telephone surveys. For surveys where there are no email addresses or SMS messages are not possible, telephone surveys might be the best option. Telephone surveys generally require either a contact list or a telephone number listing. Telephone interviews are also helpful when an interview would benefit from having someone explain information or ask probing follow-up questions to get more detail from a person.
Telephone surveys are sometimes called CATI surveys (Computer Aided Telephone Interviews). This refers to the interviewer completing the survey on software. For large telephone survey field agencies, specialist software is also used to manage telephone calls, recording, and data quality management.
The main drawbacks of telephone surveys are the increasing difficulty in getting people to answer unsolicited calls, the cost of using interviewers, only simple question types can be used, response bias by having to give responses to a person, and that telephone interviews take longer than a similar length online survey. Because of the difficulty in getting people to do a telephone interview, the sample can be very biased toward older people.
Advantages: Interviewers can ask detailed questions, provide explanations, implement quickly, and cover a geographically dispersed population.
Disadvantages: Expensive with low response rates; challenging to get a representative result; cannot show stimulus material; can only use simple questions; and answers tend to be the same (especially for importance, satisfaction and agreement scales).
In-person (face-to-face) survey is the original survey method with interviewers approaching people and asking them questions from a questionnaire. In-person surveys can be done by interviewers approaching people at a location (intercept interviews) or visiting people to complete the survey at home, in an office, or another place. Intercepting is more common than door-to-door because it is safer for staff, costs less (cost per interview), and provides more representative surveys. With intercept interviews, you can target particular groups of people based on location. In-person interviews are an ideal choice for location-based surveys or surveys where there is a high density of target groups.
An in-person survey is not the same as using people to recruit someone to complete a survey by phone or online. That is a recruitment method and not a survey method.
Advantages: Target specific people at a time and place; can show stimulus material; interviewers can ask follow-up questions and provide explanations; can use mobile devices or kiosks for more interactive and complex questioning; and can use people similar to target groups to improve response rates and engagement.
Disadvantages: Costly, staff safety issues for some locations and times; require high traffic areas; impacted by weather; requires staff training; and more challenging to control data quality.
Select a research survey method that matches the type of research you are doing
The first stage in all research, including survey research, is having a clear idea of your purpose. There are three major purposes of research.
- Exploratory
- Descriptive
- Causal (includes evaluations)
Exploratory research focuses on discovering the who, what, when, where and how of your customers, community, or market to understand the ‘why’. Exploratory research always precedes descriptive and causal research. Exploratory survey research often follows qualitative exploratory research and a review of secondary research (research that was previously done).
If your survey needs extensive exploratory research, consider using online surveys to give you more flexibility with the range and number of questions, including open-ended (free-text) question types. For exploratory research, the focus is less on having an accurate representation but rather on different kinds of experiences and factors that could influence the research topic.
If you have not done adequate exploratory research before undertaking your survey, the results can be disastrous. In community research, this could mean not including the real causes of concern and factors affecting service use. In market research, this could mean making the wrong product launch decisions with inaccurate sales forecasts. For example, while working with a pain management client, they used a survey based on younger women. The results showed limited interest in long-lasting pain relief and concern about lasting effects. The product was almost dropped until it was discovered the research should have been conducted among older males and females, who are more likely to suffer arthritis and musculoskeletal pain. For them, a long-lasting pain reliever was ideal.
Descriptive research is focused on understanding the who, what, when, where and how to size markets, opportunities and problems. Customer satisfaction, experience and market sizing research are descriptive research. Their value to an organisation is in showing how many people in a population have a characteristic, experience, behaviour, opinion or interest. Depending on the analysis done, some descriptive surveys can provide exploratory insights.
If your survey is descriptive, a key factor in survey method selection is maximising its representativeness. The better the representativeness of a survey is, the more accurate the generalisations it can make.
Causal research moves the focus to how things are correlated and cause change. Surveys focussed on causation are part of an experiment or evaluation. Testing how an event may have caused change. For example, this includes how a campaign changes attitudes and behaviour. Within the survey, correlations between results may be used to indicate causation. For example, satisfaction driver analysis infers causation from changes in experiences with satisfaction levels.
If your survey is focussed on causation, a key factor is in survey timing related to what is being studied and minimising bias from how the survey is undertaken and how people respond. Self-completion surveys often provide the best approach for testing causation.
The eleven decision factors for choosing the right research survey method
In combination with the advantages and disadvantages of each method, there are eleven criteria factors to consider.
- The type of method that is most accessible to the people you want to interview, including what type of contact details (if any!), is the most important method criteria. If you have contact details, the type you have will help determine which method to use. Having email details makes online surveys a good choice. Without contact details, surveys need to purchase contacts or directly recruit using in-person intercept interviews.
- Representativeness. Each survey method needs to be evaluated against its ability to accurately represent the types of people, experiences and views you are interested in. Not having the representation means getting the wrong results. A survey that mainly includes happy customers will not show the true state of customer service.
- A location-based survey method is needed if physical proximity to a place or event is important. In-person surveys are ideal for targeting a specific location. A kiosk survey may also be effective for high-volume service areas. For time-based proximity such as straight after an event, online, telephone, IVR or in-person approaches can work, depending on contact information availability.
- Depth of Detail. Surveys that require a high level of detail will need an online method or a personally administered approach – telephone or in-person – if getting that detail requires assistance from an interviewer.
- Potential Interviewer Bias. A non-personal survey method is needed if there is a strong potential for bias from interactions with an interviewer. In some cases, having the right type of person will increase others’ willingness to be part of a survey.
- Context Bias. If there is a strong potential for bias based on when and when a survey is completed, such as near service staff, then kiosk or IVR methods should not be used.
- Stimulus Material. If you need people to see the video, images, models, prototypes or any other material, you will need to use a method that allows you to show it to them in the survey or interview after sending it to them or after they see it at a location.
- Observation. Studies that include observing people perform a task will require in-person interviewing or recruitment to a survey stage. For example, in-store observation or event engagement.
- Privacy and Anonymity. Perceptions of whether or not an organisation can identify someone in a study will strongly impact their willingness to assist and be honest. This includes perceptions of whether or not they are being observed to complete a survey. This impacts the method choice and all communication that goes with a study.
- Analysis and Question Type. Some studies require specific questions, like choice modelling or detailed product lists, these approaches require online or in-person methods with access to an online version of the software.
- Budget. Limited budgets require trade-offs for sample size, survey length, and complexity, which may rule out telephone and in-person methods.
Mixed Method Surveys . . . combining methods to get the best outcomes
Although we have focussed on specific methods in isolation, methods can be combined to achieve more effective outcomes and efficiency. For studies that require multiple stages, a different method may be needed for an exploratory phase than for collecting descriptive data or testing causation (see the above section on the main types of research using surveys).
In some situations, multiple methods can make a survey more representative and accessible. For example, for a housing survey, we needed to include both online and in-person face-to-face interviews to ensure we had coverage across multiple locations and access to specific target groups that were reluctant to complete online surveys for accessibility reasons.
So, what is the right research survey method for you?
When choosing the right survey method, you need to understand three key things: Your insight needs and what method is most likely to attract the people you want to speak with and fit within your resources.
To find out how we can help you with the right type of survey method, contact us at engage@erisstrategy.com.au.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the different types of research survey methods? There are six main types of survey methods: Online surveys, kiosk surveys, paper-based surveys, IVR surveys (interactive voice surveys), telephone surveys and in-person (face-to-face surveys). Online, kiosk and IVR surveys are self-administered, while telephone and in-person surveys require an interviewer. Chatbot surveys are a type of online survey.
What are the different types of research? All research can be classified as either exploratory, descriptive or causal. The type of research will impact your research methods, who you research, and the analysis tools you use. Exploratory research is about understanding why something happens and the who, what, when, and where of the topic of interest. Descriptive research uses insights from exploratory research to quantify information, such as how many people have a view or are satisfied. Causal research provides answers on how changes in one area cause other changes. For example, did the changes made in a service, policy implementation, or marketing campaign have an effect? Studies may include multiple types but always focus on one.
How do you choose the right type of research survey method? When choosing the right survey method, you need to understand three key things: Your insight needs, what method is most likely to attract the people you want to speak with, and which survey method fits within your resources. The right survey method may include multiple methods at different phases of a project or to get the right representation of the people you need to engage with.