ABSTRACT
Self-completion questionnaires are usually administered in the form of a postal survey, although other methods of distribution such as fax or point-of-sale questionnaires can be used. The first step is to decide what kind of survey, in other words, how the data is collected. There are four basic options: personal interviews, telephone interviews, postal surveys and electronic surveys. This chapter examines the options, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each one, in order to help supplier decide which is most suitable for their organisation. An e-mail survey involves sending questionnaires to customers by e-mail, typically in the form of a file attachment. The customer opens the file attachment, in their own time and typically off-line, completes the questionnaire and returns it to the sender. A web survey is completed on-line by logging onto a specified web site. Most organisations reject the personal interview option because of cost and web surveys due to the difficulty of achieving a reliable sample.
