• Perspectives
• Science and Society - From Monologue to Dialogue
• New approaches to public and stakeholder engagement and consultation
• Evaluation
• The need for representative samples in quantitative research
• Project budgets

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Internet surveys of academics and researchers

The internet is an ideal way for academics and researchers to give us their views:

• Academics and researchers have ready access to the internet and can respond at the time of their choosing
• Computerised routeing of questions means that only relevant questions are asked, minimising the time taken for each respondent to complete the questionnaire
• Automatic reminder e-mails can be sent to those who have not yet responded, which consistently helps to deliver a high response rate

We are therefore able to provide robust and credible results to our clients.

A key factor in this success is intelligent questionnaire design. Questionnaires must be tailored to ask questions that genuinely address client concerns, in terminology that engages expert communities, and allows them to express themselves freely and fully.

We typically hold in-depth interviews with key people, before piloting our questionnaires with several respondents. This careful development process, combined with our experience of the policy-making world, and expertise in the use of social research techniques, means that questions get to the heart of the issue.

Web surveys can also be used to identify a small number of exemplary cases from a large community for closer follow-up. We often use both quantitative and qualitative methods during our projects, which we design to best answer our clients brief.

Past and current projects that survey academics and researchers include;

• Factors affecting science communication: Attitudes and experiences of scientists regarding public engagement work were explored by us using a web survey, on behalf of the Royal Society, the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust
• Principal Investigators’ accounts of the economic and social impacts of funding received from the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council (BBSRC)
• Researchers views on working at the interface between Chemistry and Biology, on behalf of the Royal Society of Chemistry, BBSRC, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust

For information on past work conducted by PSP, click here.

For further information about how web-based questionnaires can help your organisation, please contact Suzanne King or Alan Worley

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