At DHM Research, we are experts in the design and deployment of online questionnaires: Valid and reliable online surveys.

There are many web sites promoting their own methodology for online surveys that are inexpensive because you have to build, launch, and conduct your own survey. They seem user-friendly, with a great appearance and wonderful testimonials. Anything missing in all that? Yes. If you plan to make difficult decisions and allocate resources based on the results you get from them, you need to ask some tough questions about validity and reliability.

When the panel is large enough to demographically represent the general population of the area, and it is maintained by a reputable firm, online surveys are effective ways to enable members of a community, including voters or the general population, to provide feedback in a confidential and private manner, at their convenience, and to collect unfiltered responses to open ended questions. There are several benefits to online surveys when an appropriate panel can be obtained:

•  They are at times lower in cost
•  More questions can be asked because of the ease of response
•  Respondents can answer the questions 24 hours a day and at their convenience
•  Respondents can be more candid in their open-ended responses, which are not filtered by an interviewer

There are some limitations of an online survey that must be noted. First, there is no true equivalent of random digit dialing since there is no central directory of all email addresses. In addition, not all people have internet access, especially the elderly and low-income residents, and therefore some opinions may not be collected.