Conducting Online Surveys during Pandemic

1. Ryan Michael F. Oducado, PhD, RN, RM, LPT
December 1, 2021 via
Conducting Online
Surveys During
Pandemic:
Advantages, Challenges and Considerations

2. Hello!
I am Dr. Ryan!
I am nursing faculty and researcher.
The content is based on available references and
personal experience in conducting research in the
educational setting during the pandemic.
I declare no conflict of interest.

3. Content
 Impact of Pandemic on Research Activities
 Tools for Online Surveys
 Advantanges of Online Surveys
 Pitfalls of Online Surveys
 Considerations in Conducting Online Surveys
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4. 4
The pandemic had a major impact on the academic research
enterprise (Radecki & Schonfeld, 2020; Hlatshwako et al., 2021).
Impact of Pandemic on Research Activities

6. The COVID-19 crisis has led to an explosion of
publications regarding COVID-19 and its
consequences on varied sectors (Harper, 2020).
More than 20,000 papers have been published since
December 2019, many in prestigious journals (Harper, 2020).

8. Online survey is the
most feasible and
safest way of gathering
data in the midst of
current pandemic
Online survey is the most feasible and safest way of
gathering data amid the current pandemic.

10. Tools for
Online survey

11. 100% free!
Unlimited surveys and respondents
Automatically collected in spreadsheets
Lots of theme options
Add your own custom logo
Add images or videos
Allows skip logic and page branching
Embed survey into emails or website
Add collaborators

12. Speed and reach Reduce cost and
automation
Flexibility
and ease
Reduce
social desirability
Advantages of online survey

13. Disadvantages of online survey
Relatively low response rates or high dropouts
Sample selection and question validation are overlooked
Potential for breaches of anonymity and privacy
Risk for selection and non-response bias
Potential for any individual to respond multiple times
Potential for careless responding
Absence of human interaction can encourage hesitation
Less experimenter control
Surveys with children raises additional ethical issues

14. How confident can we be with the
results of online surveys?
While steps should be taken to maximize
response rates and screen data for multiple
and careless responses, at the present time
there is no reason to assume that online
surveys will provide lower quality data than
their paper-and-pencil counterparts (Roberts
& Allen, 2015).

15. Ethical Considerations
Dual Teacher/
Researcher Role
Informed
consent
Use of
incentives
Privacy,
anonymity, and
confidentiality
Data quality

16. Takeaways
 The pandemic is accelerating the trend of online surveys providing
unique opportunities for research in the COVID-19 era.
 Online surveys can be useful tools to rapidly gain large amounts of
data on specific questions from targeted samples.
 While online research methods have several advantages, there are
ethical challenges associated with them. It may be necessary for
researchers to be cognizant of the ethical requirements for
conducting online surveys.

17.  Nonetheless, when conducted
rigorously, online surveys can
provide technically sound and
ethically defensible methods of
research.
 The invitations to participate in
online survey will probably
continue. It is important to
make the most of the online
survey data available.

18. References
Ball, H. L. (2019). About research: Conducting online surveys. Journal of Human Lactation, 089033441984873.
Buchanan, E. A., & Hvizdak, E. E. (2009). Online survey tools: Ethical and methodological concerns of human research
ethics committees. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 4(2), 37-48.
Gupta, S. (2017). Ethical issues in designing internet-based research: Recommendations for good practice. Journal of
Research Practice, 13(2), Article D1.
Harper (2020) The impact of COVID-19 on research. Journal of Pediatric Urology, 16(5): 715–716.
Hlatshwako, T. G., Shah, S. J., Kosana, P., Adebayo, E., Hendriks, J., Larsson, E. C., ... & Tucker, J. D. (2021). Online
health survey research during COVID-19. The Lancet Digital Health, 3(2), e76-e77.
Radecki & Schonfeld (2020. The Impacts of COVID-19 on the research enterprise: A landscape review. Ithaka S+ R.
Roberts, L. D., & Allen, P. J. (2015). Exploring ethical issues associated with using online surveys in educational research.
Educational Research and Evaluation, 21(2), 95-108.
Weiner, D.L., Balasubramaniam, V., Shah, S.I. et al. (2020) COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19
research, implications for pediatric research. Pediatric Research, 88, 148-150.

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Thank you!
Any questions?
You can email me at rmoducado@wvsu.edu.ph