Hi,

I am currently piloting my online questionnaire and I’d be eternally grateful if you could spare me 5-10 minutes (possibly less if you are quick!) to complete my online questionnaire and offer feedback as I have never designed a questionnaire before and have been struggling with this part of my MBA dissertation.

My research is examining opportunities for local food producers and retailers to embrace emerging Web 2.0 (including Social Media) marketing techniques to market their key points of difference and overcome barriers to satisfying consumers increasing desires to purchase local foods.

As this is the pilot study there are feedback questions at the bottom of each page where I would be grateful if you can not only report any issues you find but offer suggestions as to how you think the questionnaire could be improved. Alternatively you can post your feedback on the forum here.

You can access the questionnaire at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MarkLinsell

A massive thanks in advance if you can help,
Mark.

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I won't do the whole survey if you don't mind as only have a few minutes, plus I don't live or have any connection with Hampshire - that would be one observation. Is it only open to people with a Hampshire connection?

Other than I would say watch some of your tenses as you alternate in some questions

local food is spelt throughout with a lowercase 'l' except for one time when you change to upper case.

...buying food online is easier... - easier than what, than before, than I expected, easier than in shops??

you don't include homemaker or similar on the first page - not really nice to be dumped in 'other'!!!

Your question about local food being in Hampshire or being from within a 30 mile radius - would some food not come from both Hampshire and a 30 mile radius for some people?? You ask for only one answer but probably likely people will want to tick more than one.

Hope some of this is useful :-)

Thanks Ady, you have provided some great feedback which is much appreciated.

The actual survey will be targeting people that have a connection with Hampshire as my dissertation tutor wanted me to focus on a single region, although I suspect the findings could equally be applied to any other region.

My question about local food being in Hampshire or being from within a 30 mile radius is trying to identify how people define local food. There is a lot of confusion around the term local food and there is no single definition in the literature, which is why I force respondents to select a single answer as I want to find which definition they think bests describes local food.

I certainly need to add a homemaker option as that was an oversight on my part, and I'll make the other changes you suggest.

Thanks again.

I'm really sorry but I don't have that amount of time spare at the moment. I've looked at a few pages and given feedback but you may want to switch off the compulsory responses as it's easier for people to proofread it for you? Also, you may consider not having it at all so it gives your respondents a chance not to answer something they don't want to and just skipping that particular question rather than dropping off the survey altogether.

Thanks Skig, I appreciate not everyone has the time to complete the survey.

I have uploaded a pdf copy for those that are willing to provide feedback but don't have the time to complete the whole survey. You can access it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5384584/Pilot%20Survey%20v2.pdf

I am really undecided whether to switch off compulsory responses, on the one hand it catches questions that respondents have accidently missed but as you say it might result in people dropping off the survey altogether. Has anyone seen any academic research into this area as my search so far has proven fruitless.

I really appreciate all the help and feedback you guys are providing :-)

Q12, 4th down 'it's' instead of 'its'
Q15, 2nd down 'there' instead of 'their' - the first couple of statements sound a bit odd. Do you mean 'I'm not sure if local food is available?' What are you trying to find out? Your using the past so are you asking about their experience on something? This needs to be a bit more clearer I think.
Qs19 and 20,your first option had 'Page' starting with a capital instead of 'page'

As for the compulsory or not compulsory, I'm not aware of any research I'm afraid, just speaking from my own experience as I had an online questionnaire with quite a few missing answers. I'll never know whether these were randomly missed or not (statistics tell me they weren't but this is just probability ;-) but I can tell you that a couple of people missed a whole page and I don't think this was a mistake as the questions were quite personal. They chose not to but they continued with the survey so I got to use their data on other answers still. Maybe you could think about how many participants you'll need, how easy sampling will be, etc before you decide?

Good luck!

PS. I also think it's nice to have a choice of whether or not to answer but that's a personal opinion and I have been known for being a bit of a rebel!

Thanks Skig, you should be a professional proof reader! English was never my best subject at school.

Q15 is asking people about the barriers that might have prevented them buying local foods. I use statements like “I didn’t know local food was available” because my study might have just made them aware of local foods, so I was hoping wording the statement in this way would allow people to say they weren’t aware even if they now are. Does that make more sense, or do you still think this could be clearer?

I have tried to avoid asking questions that were quite personal which is why I grouped ages into ranges etc. Although I was surprised to learn during the pilot how few people are willing to reveal their postcode. I didn’t think it was that personal but the majority of people have either left it blank or entered “NA” so I guess that needs to be removed.

I think you are right about the compulsory or not compulsory debate ultimately coming down to personal preference. I am still leaning towards compulsory if only to save myself from having to filter out the incomplete results later.

Thanks for the compliment but I much prefer my subject than proofreading 8-)

I think your Q15 could be clearer to be honest. I can see why you've framed the questions the way you did (from the researcher's point of view) but from the respondents' point of view it might not make sense and you may want to change a bit. Maybe add 'prior to completing this survey' at the end of the statements? I'm sure there are better options but none I can think of right now.

As for postcodes, if you ask them to reveal the first part and the number or just the first part alone, you'll probably get more answers eg. AA1 1 or AA1 - you'll need to provide examples within the question though.

As for missing answers, you don't necessarily need to filter out manually, computer programmes do that for you and you can ask them to ignore missing data when doing your stats, etc if that's of any help but the survey is yours so up to you.

Good luck!