Elements that contribute to a successful survey

The web site www.surveysystem.com provided me a lot of info regarding how to make a successful survey. And it has a lot of tips on styles of questions, and specificalities of types of emails.

BASIC STEPS

1. Establish the goals of the project - DONE
2. Determine your sample ( target audience) - DONE
3. Choose interviewing methodology - DONE
4. Create your questionnaire - DONE ( needs approval)
5. Pre-test the questionnaire, if practical - HAVEN´T DONE
6. Conduct interviews and enter data - HAVEN´T DONE
7. Analyze the data - HAVEN´T DONE

SPECIFIC EMAIL SURVEY

ADVANTAGES
1 - Speed. An email questionnaire can gather several thousand responses within a day or two.
2 - There is practically no cost involved once the set up has been completed.
3 - You can attach pictures and sound files.
4 - The novelty element of an email survey often stimulates higher response levels than ordinary “snail” mail surveys.

DISADVANTAGES
1 - You must possess a list of email addresses. (Started already, first thoughts: the hardest task so far)

2- Some people will respond several times or pass questionnaires along to friends to answer. Many programs have no check to eliminate people responding multiple times to bias the results. (this wont be a problem, the problem may even be the opposite, people not answering)

3- Many people dislike unsolicited email even more than unsolicited regular mail. You may want to send email questionnaires only to people who expect to get email from you. ( considering this fact, but still got to define the whole "approach" strategy, after the approval of the questions)

4- You cannot use email surveys to generalize findings to the whole populations. People who have email are different from those who do not, even when matched on demographic characteristics, such as age and gender. ( my audience is already defined, and i also a expect to send the survey only to defined emails)

5- Email surveys cannot automatically skip questions or randomize question or answer choice order or use other automatic techniques that can enhance surveys the way Web page surveys can. ( not a problem here)