There are essential demographic and other information that is important to capture as part of project evaluations. These can on paper seem daunting and in many ways time consuming in what is usually a time limited or time precious environment. Having supported and delivered online surveys for evaluating community-based projects delivered across organisations, here are some benefits that we think online surveys can give:
1. The great thing about online questionnaires is that it can be set up to ask different questions to different audiences, for example you can use trigger questions at the beginning such as the organisation or group name to ask very specific questions to that group whilst still keeping the generic sections of the questionnaire the same.
2. Where there are different accessibility considerations, you can republish the same questionnaire in slightly different formats, such as taking the colours, design and font size into consideration. This does not necessarily add a lot of time or resource, but helps ensure that all the potential contributors have the questionnaire presented in the most accessible way.
3. By it’s nature, online questionnaires can be in real time for delivering the responses in a ready to use format.  So even if you get partial responses, you can set up a monitoring system that alerts you to the fact that the response has been received. This means that even as you are rushing to the next meeting, the very latest response can be used to inform your discussions.
4. Even where online questionnaires are not the most user-friendly and paper-versions have to be used, having an online format for entering the data means that anyone without database or analysis knowledge can enter the data using the online questionnaire from multiple locations. this also removes the worry of having one version of the database in one central location with only one knowledgeable person to access and enter the data.
5. The scalability of online questionnaires across organisations and individuals without affecting cost in quite the same way as paper versions is just something that cannot be argued with.

Whether the distribution is paper-based or email-based for evaluating the community projects, it just makes sense to have an online version, whether it is for the facilitators or participants to use.

Online data collections are both quick and effective ways of collecting data. Although there are free versions that you can set up and run, it is not always easy to work out the best route and also take into consideration the best way to present the questionnaire so that the user will complete and submit it quickly. We have published online questionnaires and surveys for simple and complex projects. We can make sure that everything from the web address, questionnaire hosting,  to the identity coming through on the questionnaire reflects your project or organisation as well as designing the questionnaire with the participant in mind. And very importantly, we monitor the responses, feedback to improve response rates and make sure that the data arrives in the most usable format ready for analysis (or even analyse it for you).

Cost is no longer a barrier for questionnaires and surveys and if you are not sure how you need to proceed and just need advice, or guidance, please do contact us and we can help you through the process. Even what looks like a complex questionnaire can go online with very minimal effort and cost, so why not give it a go.