Customer Reviews

Survey Research and the World Wide Web

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Survey Research and the World Wide Web by Dale Nesbary is a good basic review of survey research and its possibilities on the Web. The book begins with a simple, easy to follow general overview of survey research methods as well as a review of the Internet's history. The book's highlight is Chapter 3, which presents research findings on Internet surveys in general and discusses three survey projects undertaken by the author. The results highlight the benefits of web-based surveys. The final two chapters are a step-by-step tutorial on building web surveys in MS FrontPage and conducting online research.

My only criticism of the book concerns its lack of discussion of internal and external validity in research design. Validity concepts are easy to understand and should have been in the book. As it turns out, all three of the author's surveys may suffer from selection bias. This oversight, however, does not significantly diminish the book's value as an easy to read guide. I will use this book as a training tool for new graduate students in my survey research center.

This is a disappointing book for a book with a good title. For my interest it was far too basic and provided little new information. It does not provide much that helps evaluate the value of www surveys, does not give any idea of the wide range of types of www surveys and gives no indication of what software and hardware is required. The form of www survey that it describes is the most basic form that really does not extend beyon simple HTML forms and certainly does not represent the potential of these surveys demonstrate the range of things that can be achieved with them. Nor does it provide an adequate account of the dangers of www surveys or solutions to the potential problems The book would be useful to the absolute novice but beyond this it is not very helpful.

I kept the book all of one night before sending it back. The information in the book was way too basic for my taste. If you are familiar with HTML forms at all then this book is not for you. Maybe if you are just starting with the idea of conducting online research then this book would be helpful, but I found it outdated already and somewhat elementary (i.e. a chapter on using search engines).

I purchased this book and found it overly-basic and frankly a waste of time. Make sure the survey provider you choose offers Correlation analysis, Confidence intervals, and Cumulative distribution are among the various statistical measures used to analyze your results. I found that Vista is the only survey tool gives you all of this crucial information.