A survey about China doctor's perception and preference on body slimming products was conducted late 2008 to the respondents of our Consumer Search Medical Panel (CMP), with the objectives to understand respondents' views towards the consumers' perception of body slimming products or services.

 

The interviews on doctors were conducted in hybrid manner (telephone + online self-administration). Email invitation to our online survey was sent to CMP respondents, those not took part in the online survey were interviewed later via telephone methodology.

 

This summary documents a brief comparison between the online methodology and telephone methodology, in terms of contact result, responses, and panel update.

 

 

The response rate of the survey via online methodology is 3%, while for telephone methodology, the response rate is 70.7%a.

 

From other researches we know that these medical professionals prefer to be interviewed via telephone methodology than online methodology. When asked about the behavior of email usage, the majority of these medical professionals state that they do not acquire a habit of checking emails frequently, so they may not be able to check timely our email invitation, especially when the research timeline is tight.

 

A way to boost up the response rate of online survey, therefore, is to have a telephone reminder to these invited respondents, after email invitation being sent out. During the reminder call, email address can be verified again to make sure our email invitation safely reaches the targeted respondents' email accounts.

 

In addition to the interviewing, questions reconfirming contact information, such as contact number, office address, email address etc., are asked in both online and telephone methodologies – as we believe that a good maintenance of the panel helps to ensure our surveys being conducted in a time and cost-effective manner.

 

It is found that, in this survey, no respondent did update / change on their contact information via online methodology, while we had quite some updates from respondents being interviewed via telephone, reflecting that telephone methodology is more effective in terms of panel update / maintenance, when verbal reconfirmation is available.

 

 

In average, 1 valid responseb is obtained per open end question via online methodology, while 2 valid responses are obtained per open end question in average via telephone methodology.

 

The difference in number of response is mainly due to the probing of interviewers, which cannot be done via online methodology.

 

For a survey consisting of mostly close end questions, there is not much difference be it conducted online or via telephone, whereas it is observed that more valid responses of open end questions can be obtained via telephone methodology than online one.

 

 

The quality of close end responses does not vary too much comparing telephone methodology and online methodology, while skipping / logic check can be better controlled via online methodology by adding relevant skipping / logic instructions on the online survey program.

 

The responses of open end questions, nevertheless, would be better gathered via probing and clarification with the presence of interviewers, so that researchers can get more accurate responses for analysis.

 

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