Electronic Survey Administration: Assessment in the Twenty-First Century

Recent advances in electronic data collection have opened broad new possibilities for educational assessment. Potentially significant savings in time, money, and effort make Web-based and e-mail-based surveys more and more attractive as alternatives to mail surveys and face-to-face interviews. Yet, as with any major change, questions and obstacles arise. Software packages require financial commitment, as well as hardware and programming support. There are also questions regarding the validity of electronically collected data. This study has two principal purposes. The first is to examine the practical, logistical advantages and disadvantages of electronic versus paper administration techniques for a large-scale survey project. The second is to evaluate the relative agreement of data received using electronic versus paper collection processes. The results of this research suggest that after the initial investment and learning curve, significant savings in time and effort, substantially quicker turn-around time and potentially richer data resulted from the electronic process. The main downsides include the initial cost of the software and greater technical support needed to configure and operate the programs successfully.