Large Survey Process Steps 7-9

Step 7. When will you conduct your survey?

You may have heard us say this before: Wake conducts lots of large surveys!

Why do we ask these questions on the Large Survey Request Form?

Typically, only one large survey can be administered at a time. The Large Survey Schedule shows what surveys have already been approved to go into the field. Your request probably won’t be approved if it overlaps with an existing request.

Tips for best practice

Most surveys are open for two weeks. Surveys are sometimes open for longer, but most participants respond within the first week or two unless you engage in extra marketing efforts.

Step 8. Do you need IRB approval?

The Large Survey Request form will ask if your project has been submitted to the Institutional Review Board (IRB).

If you do not know if your project needs to be submitted to the IRB, please contact the IRB directly. We cannot advise you about IRB policies or practices.

Because the IRB process can also take days or weeks, we encourage you to contact the IRB early in the development of your survey.

Why do we ask this question on the Large Survey Request Form?

If your project needs to be submitted to the IRB, your IRB application must be approved before conducting your survey.

Step 9. What incentives are you offering?

An incentive is something you give respondents in exchange for completing your survey, such as cash or a gift. The use of incentives in a survey may increase response rates and are a good way to express gratitude to the respondents for their time.

We do not ask about your incentives on the Large Survey Request form. After your survey is complete, we will ask you to report what incentives you used, if any. We periodically review the data you provide about incentives so we can offer you guidance about the benefits of incentives on this web page.

Tips for best practice

If you’re thinking about using gift cards as incentives, Financial Service’s Forest Funds program can help you order gift cards (plastic or digital) and manage the associated logistics, such as participant logs and Workday clearances.

Help us help you!

Think about incorporating an experiment

We often get asked great questions about survey methods: What is the best day for starting a survey? What time of day should I send out reminders? What kinds of advertising works best?

When you conduct a survey experiment, you help us answer your future questions.

After your survey is complete, when we ask you to report your response rate and use of incentives, we will also ask you to report whether you conducted an experiment so we can add to the knowledge we share on these web pages.

There are lots of ways to conduct simple survey experiments. For instance, you could randomly split your sample into two, and send each half different email reminders or incentives. Here is a real example from a survey sent out to undergraduate students:

Two groups (A & B) were formed randomly prior to sending out the survey invitations to all undergraduates. There were 2751 students in Group A invited to take the survey and 2753 students in Group B invited to take the survey. Group A got their invitations at 4pm on Friday, October 22 and Group B at 2pm Monday, October 25. Both groups received the same invitation offering two $150 bookstore gift cards as incentive. There were no reminders. Responses between the two groups were largely similar. Group A had a response rate of 10% while Group B’s response rate was 13%.

If you choose to perform an experiment and are using Qualtrics, you can learn how to combine the two groups’ responses here.

Questions? Contact us at largesurvey@wfu.edu