OK, this is just an idea at the moment but this seemed like a good place to float it.

Would you like to be able to do your own research and get dozens of relevant responses from your target audience? Internet fora are regularly canvassed by students from high school to PHDs looking for responses to a survey they have constructed. It is a good idea but it usually doesn't work because people cannot be bothered writing or emailing lengthy responses and there is no incentive for them to do so.

We thought a service that worked like this would be good:

~ You send us your questionnaire (Word, PDF or similar format)
~ We turn it into a web form and place it on our servers, complete with error and success pages
~ We then join relevant internet fora on your behalf and invite people to fill in your survey.
~ Respondents are offered an incentive in the form of entry into a prize draw (typically an Amazon voucher, provided by us).
~ All results are emailed directly to you.
~ Your identity is protected at all times

To give you some background, I represent a small but highly experienced web design company with over twelve years under its belt.

What do you think? Is there a gap in the market for this sort of service, how many people would use it and how much would they be prepared to pay assuming there was a minimum guaranteed response with money back if that response level was not reached. Would there be a sufficient response to justify (eg) advertising on this site?

If this isn't the best forum for this then sorry - mods please move or delete as appropriate

- NickB

I just use survey monkey - doesn't that do all the things you are suggesting? Maybe apart from getting guaranteed responses. But I personally perfer to manage my account myself on there to ensure that my data is kept confidential.

I have some (considerable) skepticism re the phrase 'guaranteed responses'. And like the other poster stated, what you're suggesting is nothing particularly new anyway.

Hmm - yes and the prize giving is a bit odd - this can affect your research because it changes peoples motivation for taking part. I had a friend who offered an entry into a prize draw for his survey. He ended up with 90% of his data being falsely entered just to get an entry into the competition e.g. they went through the whole survey saying Strongly disagree, strongly disagree....... So he had very little data at the end of it.

Thanks for that - I didn't know about Survey Monkey, but that looks like a good service. I don't think we'll bother competing with that.

Re. the 'prize' -(previous respondent) - the idea was to offer a small incentive, not sufficiently large to encourrage filling in the survey for that reason alone -but you are right, people can be weird.

Thanks all respondents for your help and good luck weith your studies.

- NickB