Background and objectives

OldFriendsOldFlames is a successful UK reunion website launched in April, 2002. This website has attracted a large membership and its Directors wanted to find out more about their members - age, sex, location, marital status etc, and also to understand why they use reunion sites and which sections of the website they regard as most useful.

Cleverform was selected as the preferred software. "We were looking for software that was simple to use and would not involve us in inordinate expense" says Malcolm Hamer, Chairman of OldFriendsOldFlames. The questionnaire was designed by the staff at OldFriendsOldFlames and included single choice, multiple choice and open-ended questions. Excel spreadsheets of the e-mail addresses of a random sample of members were provided. A variety of online interviewing approaches was used to test response rates.

The Survey

A total of 4960 questionnaires was sent out by e-mail in October 2002 and 560 responses (11%) were achieved, almost all of these being returned complete within 3 days. This is a very impressive and rapid response rate, especially as many of the questions were sensitive and personal. No incentives were offered, and the interview was not personalised. If either or both of these had been used it is probable that response rates would have been considerably higher.

Response rates did vary considerably by method chosen, and it is clear that the most effective approach is one question embedded in an e-mail, followed by one question per page. This achieved response rates 50% higher than some other methods. Cleverform is the only online interviewing software that enables this approach to be used.

Conclusions

"We conducted the survey ourselves, without involving expensive IT people, we didn't have to buy a software license, and we obtained in-depth information which has taught us a lot about our membership and will enable us to market more effectively. And as a bonus we now have personal data on many of our members so we can communicate with them on a personal level. All of this for much less than £1000 - around £1 per completed questionnaire!"

Malcolm Hamer, Chairman, OldFriendsOldFlames