1. I teach a whole course on survey research methods. We conducted a web survey last semester as part of the course. Don't start such a survey until you have learned enough to do it well. There are several texts. The main text we used is by Dillman. It is reasonably good at providing basic information, but I don't think it can be used alone. In general, the response rate will be very low to any web survey. But there are LOTS of points you need to be aware of before you start.
2. Check out Dillman's latest book - he has some wonderful advice on the topic!
The big issue is making sure the e-mail doesnt end up in a SPAM account and calculating response rates.
We've just started an electronic survey - so that's all I can tell you for now
Good luck!
3. Zoomerang charges about $300 for a year's subscription, enabling you to have use of their software and website. If you want to use their members to sample, they charge another fee on top of that to send a request out to their members who respond to surveys based on interest area and an incentive system. I plan on using Zoomerang as part of my sampling plan for a study I'm doing on email sexual harassment so I'll be happy to share once I learn more about the results. I had a doctoral student do some pre-testing of instruments on Zoomerang with success.
My doctoral student used an on-line survey for her diss and one thing she found is that she couldn't control who had access to the web address. E.g. she offered a $50 prize if people responded...she recruited people in Louisiana, Texas, and NY (based on a company she was using and geographic availability). One prize winner lived in North Carolina!!! How in the heck did they learn about the survey??? So you don't have control over that sort of thing. If certain demographics are important to you, that may be an issue...but if it doesn't matter where they are from, I think it might be a non-issue.
4. I ran across a company called something like ZOOMERANG in Menlo Park or thereabouts in California...you can probably find them on Google. The company specialized in doing surverys for academics and others.
I'm a doctoral student at NOVA Southeastern University, W. Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship, and am at the beginning stages of writing my dissertation but did some research with the past 2 years on surveys (I have to do one for for about 3,000 engineers). The problem I've run into is two-fold and for me, a bit discouraging, but I'll share with you since you asked for pitfalls (although I recognize that you may have thought of these already).
People don't like to respond to surveys if they don't know the person sending it AND worry about how the information they relate will be used.
I had called Zoomerang and they seemed reliable (and one of my former classmates recommended the company (but can't recall how much they charge).
I will be purchasing mailing list from some of the professional engineering associations...(a) the associations don't give out email addresses....(b) some associations are even getting skittish about even selling mailing lists nowadays with all the scams. My university tells me that I must show proof of where I got my mailing lists....I guess this rule has to do with ensuring integrity of the process, and the School doesn't want to impair its accreditation. Interestingly, even though I belong to many engineering associations, I can't just use the membership directories from these groups....have to buy the mailing lists.
5. I based my dissertation on responses to an online survey (for details, follow the next link; a description starts on page 70, and Appendix C shows screenshots of the actual survey):
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-07232003-191847/unrestricted/Olivas-LujanMR_etd2003.pdf
There were a few papers and even books available with tips on the topic:
Birnbaum, M. H. (2001). Introduction to behavioral research on the Internet. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Couper, M. P., & Burt, G. (1994). Interviewer Attitudes Toward Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI). Social Science Computer Review, 12(1), 38-54.
Couper, M. P., Traugott, M. W., & Lamias, M. J. (2001). Web Survey Design and Administration. Public Opinion Quarterly, 65(2), 230-253.
Norman, K. L., Friedman, Z., Norman, K., & Stevenson, R. (2001). Navigational issues in the design of online self-administered questionnaires. Behaviour & Information Technology, 20(1), 37-45.
Simsek, Z., & Veiga, J. F. (2001). A Primer on Internet Organizational Surveys. Organizational Research Methods, 4(3), 218-235.
Stanton, J. M. (1998). An Empirical Assessment of Data Collection Using the Internet. Personnel Psychology, 51(3), 709-725.
Stanton, J. M., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2001). Using Internet/Intranet Web Pages to Collect Organizational Research Data. Organizational Research Methods, 4(3), 200-217.
but I think that the most useful source for me was the following book:
Dillman, D. A. (2000). Mail and Internet surveys : the tailored design method (2nd ed.). New York : J. Wiley.
6. Best of luck with your survey... Just know that there are a lot of SPAM filters in place.. so if a message contains too many hotmail, yahoo, aol, gmail, etc addresses -- it may go to a SPAM folder... (we see this a lot in admissions).
There was one more message, which essentially just reiterated information about zoomerang.
Janet
Janet Romaine, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Economics and Business
Saint Anselm College
Manchester, NH 03103