The increasing popularity of the Internet has offered companies the perfect platform to submit surveys to a broad audience. Traditionally, companies have used surveys to collect demographic and social data, as well as to obtain some advantageous clues on the potential of a new product (Online Survey, n.d.). As correctly highlighted in the discussion, online surveys offer a series of unquestioned advantages, including ease of data collection, low costs, and extreme design flexibility. This paper aims at providing some useful hints on the quality of the data, and on a topical and delicate issue, namely the data protection and their use in scientific research.
Among the downsides of online surveys, the quality of the retrieved data has often been questioned, as, in most cases, honesty and accuracy are not a priority of the participants (Cibelli, 2017). They may cheat for several reasons, to protect their privacy in a drug abuse surveys, or to consciously influence the outcomes of a political questionnaire. More simply, online surveys are often seen as tedious and useless, affecting the behavior of the respondents negatively. An innovative solution to make the surveys more attractive consists in gamification, a technique which has proved successful in increasing the quality of the data, especially when young people are involved (Harms, Biegler, Wimmer, Kappel, & Grechenig, 2015). The large amount of data collected in online surveys suggests further readings on how sensible data should be protected and handled in some specific case. For example, online surveys conducted in biomedical research require a dynamic consent from the respondents in order to make the data available to broader scientific research (Kaye et al., 2015). In such cases, protection, privacy, and availability of the data should be integrated into a scheme that suits the requirements of both participants and researchers.
Online surveys are largely used both for commercial and scientific purposes, offering a vast array of advantages. However, the quality of the data is not always verifiable, and different design approaches are suggested to make online surveys more attractive and effective. Also, these design approaches should take into consideration a careful and flexible use the data, especially in scientific research.
References
Cibelli, K. (2017). The effects of respondent commitment and feedback on response quality in online surveys. Web.
Harms, J., Biegler, S., Wimmer, C., Kappel, K., & Grechenig, T. (2015). Gamification of Online Surveys: Design Process, Case Study, and Evaluation. Web.
Kaye, J., Whitley, E. A., Lund, D., Morrison, M., Teare, H., & Melham, K. (2015). Dynamic consent: a patient interface for twenty-first century research networks.European Journal of Human Genetics, 23, 141–146. Web.
Online Survey. (n.d.). In Techopedia Technology Dictionary. Web.