Inside blue numbers

Choosing Data Collection Tools

A dizzying number of research methodologies are available. How do you choose among them? IntelliPulse examines each client’s needs and provides options and recommendations on the techniques that best suit the research objectives, the research audience, and the intended research uses.

Our expertise rests in:

  • Telephone interviews — Random-digit dialling still provides the most cost effective means of achieving a representative sample among the public or customers. In some cases clients provide customer, member, or businesses telephone numbers, or we obtain sample for specific geographic areas from our supplier.
  • Web-based — This technique is valuable for the ‘committed audience’ such as employees, members or business customers where advanced notification and an “invitation” is provided, questionnaires have complex skip patterns, or respondents are asked to refer to interactive material. Respondents complete the survey on-line with the survey “housed” through code access at our or our client’s web-site.
  • Mail-back — These are useful for employees, customers, or members where e-mail or the Internet is not an option, or the questionnaire is long or contains sensitive information.
  • Placed-mail — Studies that have a long questionnaire and where a random sample is required use a combination of a telephone survey to contact and screen respondents and a mail, email, or e-mail / web redirect to deliver the survey.
  • Intercept — In some situations where lists of contacts are not available interviews must take place at a specific location, such as a retail store or tourist destination. Specific respondent selection criteria are developed (such as every nth person) to reduce selection bias.
  • Qualitative focus groups — This method is useful for exploring and building upon ideas by way of probing open-end questions. Three to ten participants are recruited for each group and the discussion is lead by an experienced IntelliPulse moderator.
  • Individual depth interviews — Senior research personnel conduct the interviews among highly targeted key informants