The New Economics of Survey Research

I am a member of the Indiana State Bar Association and part of the organizing committee for the Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference.   I got involved with this effort several years ago when I attended the annual conference in preparation for my Law Firms course.  It is a remarkable group of professionals who have taught me a lot about the many soft and hard skills necessary to build a successful and satisfying law practice.   Therefore, when the group asked me to conduct a member survey of financial and billing practices, I was happy to reciprocate.

But here is the hitch:  we did not have much of a budget.   Remarkably, thanks to a wonderful web utility called SurveyMonkey.com, lack of funding is becoming less of an obstacle for survey research.   Here is a copy of my 35 question survey to ISBA members, which was approved by Indiana University's IRB committee (as a side note, my total time allocation to get IRB approval was eight hours--far from a horror story).   Responses to the survey were generated via an email from the ISBA Executive Director that solicited member participation.  That email contained a link to the Study Information Sheet (an IRB requirement), which was hosted on the ISBA website.  A link to the actual survey was placed at the bottom of the Study Information Sheet.

For a whopping $360 (for a full-year premium service subscription) payable to SurveyMonkey.com, I got the following:

• A wonderful survey tool with easy-to-use drop down menus;
• A secure, encrypted Internet connection for each survey respondent (without this option, the price drops to $240);
• The ability to view preliminary results in real time;
• A large digital file of results that could be readily imported into Excel, SSPS, Stata, or another statistical program;
• 1,280 respondents.

Frankly, it is too early to tell whether our solicitation method produced a biased sample.  (And if so, we may be able to fix that through a weighting methodology based on what we know of the whole ISBA population.)  But the preliminary results are certainly encouraging.  The new economics of survey research made this possible.    FYI, if I used the Indiana University Survey Center to conduct this poll, the total cost would have been in excess of $8,000. 

Comments

[Leslie]

So - can you tell me you experience with Survey Monkey and how it worked out for you in the long run - ?
~L