Selection of Technology for Survey Administration

The use of an Internet or Intranet survey administration as the primary means of questionnaire delivery and the capturing of employee responses is recommended. However, you must also prepare for backup administration in other modes to accommodate individuals or locations that may not have access to, experience with, or necessary resources for online administration. Backup would include the following:

The selection of primary and backup administration modes should be made with the Organizational Survey project manager and the Steering Committee. You may find that an Intranet survey is better for some units, while an e-mail survey is better for others. There may be some units for which a paper and pencil survey in a group setting is the most expedient.

Another important decision is the location of the host server for the Organizational Survey. Hosting the survey on your survey consultant's server will be easier for them to administer and less costly for you. It also provides a better perception of the protection of anonymity and confidentiality. However, if your consultant hosts the survey on their server, the respondents may be subject to the reliability and the varying speeds of the World Wide Web. This is not a serious issue, but it does create a few more HELP DESK calls than when it is hosted on your Intranet. Help desk services can be provided by your survey consultant or you.

Hosting the survey on your Intranet server may guarantee more reliable and faster connections with fewer incident reports and HELP DESK queries. However, there may be a greater cost to you as a result of training supplied by your survey consultant and the need to coordinate their access and maintenance activities with your IT unit. If you host the survey on your server, it will require the dedication of internal IT support to make any survey successful. Finally, there may be some impact on the perception of anonymity and confidentiality.

For all of the above reasons we usually recommend hosting the Organizational Survey on your survey consultant's server.