I have used Qualtics before to collect participants. My thesis student just did as well. It was a positive experience. The data was all solid. In fact, they accidentally collected too many participants with their snowball sampling technique and gave the extra participant data free of charge. I'm on the thesis committee for an engineering student who also used Qualtrics for a survey panel and had the same positive experience.

Thanks Stephanie, that's really useful to know as I'm considering that company. Really appreciate your response.

I have used a research panel for my PhD and they were very quick, very easy but quite expensive. It is, I'm sure you are aware, important to consider potential biases associated with this method of daya collection and talk about them in your thesis. Here are a couple of papers that talk about things you might like to consider:

 Goritz A. (2004) The impact of material incentives on response quantity, response quality, sample composition, survey outcome and cost in online access panels. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MARKET RESEARCH. 46: 327-346.

Nancarrow C and Cartwright T. (2007) Online access panels and tracking research: The conditioning issue. International Journal of Market Research 49: 573-594.

never and there is no system in our country like that

Thanks Ross, I'll download those articles now!

no

I use SurveyMonkey but I do not pay them to collect data...I asked for a cost of this and that is, in my opinion, prohibitive unless you have a significant grant to fund it. However, designing and posting your own survey can work....much depends upon the nature of the participants and your research question. My area of study tends not to have a great volume of willing participants since it appears that most people will not discuss incarcerated relatives or friends and the hassle of trying to visit them......c'est la vie!!

Dear Alaric,

Thanks for your response and insight. I can imagine that your area of study makes it difficult.

Bronwyn

Good day Bronwyn,

I would echo Ross Thomson's advice to ensure you identify your recruitment methods and the biases that result. It seems as though with the expansion of survey administration as a research method in a variety of disciplines, survey participants are starting to experience fatigue; answering the same questions over and over again. Incentives to complete surveys may be the way of the future as long as we identify how/why participants are involved in our research studies with clear justification then we will be able to rely on the data. Whether or not the use of incentives is financially feasible will depend on the project and the funding that you have to carry out your research.

Cheers!

My experience with Qualtrics was very positive. Off course, they are very expensive.