Research Methods in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

5.5.2 Online questionnaires using Qualtrics

The use of online questionnaires in tourism, hospitality and events is a growing area

of interest. Businesses are increasingly using social networking sites to collect

information about their consumers. Social networking sites such as Facebook are

gaining in popularity for both individuals and organisations and it is interesting to

debate how useful they are for data collection. The use of social networking sites to

collect data is appealing because they are easy to access and you are able to target

particular market segments such as the millennials who are very active in their use of

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systems. There are issues with online surveys because people may not trust them and

it is easy to ignore them, so response rates may be low. You may want to consider

conducting your survey or questionnaire both online and on paper so that you target

a wider set of respondents.

Other organisations offer to design and conduct surveys on your behalf online, and

these are becoming important in the research process. Companies such as

Surveymonkey (

www.surveymonkey.co.uk

) and Qualtrics offer online and analytical

tools to help you with the design and analysis of your questionnaire. At Plymouth

University, we bought the Qualtrics package for our students in the business area and

this is being increasingly used by them to conduct their research. We saw in

Illustration 5.2

, for example, that Luke employed an online survey using Qualtrics to

research the consumer view of local food. A colleague at our university has become

an expert in the use of Qualtrics and he provides his short guide to this in 

Illustration

5.5

.

Illustration 5.5 Using the Qualtrics insight platform, by Rob Giles

Introduction

Data collection is a science combining elements of technology,

psychology, statistics and data interpretation before conclusions can be

suggested and tested for consistency.

Cloud-based survey builders have become an increasingly popular

method for collecting quantitative data. There are many to choose from,

however Qualtrics provides an illustration of how, with a user-friendly

and highly flexibly interface, the focus for the research can be placed on

the research objective rather than on technical restrictions.

Free questionnaire applications are likely to handicap your research and

increase the time and effort required by the researcher. For serious

researchers and professionals, it is not a question of how one might

compromise from the ideal research solution but more a case of how an

improved solution might be possible utilising some of the many advanced

features that are available within the application.

The following is a brief explanation that highlights just some of the

features regularly used by researchers to elicit the maximum response

rate possible. Ensuring both the quality and appropriateness of the data

collected will inevitably result in more rigorous hypothesis testing and

generally improved outcome and recommendations.