Budgeting
The costs of a lifestyle
survey will vary depending on a number of factors
including the length of questionnaire, the sample size and
methodology used. The table below illustrates the broad
costs for a survey of 1000 completed
questionnaires..
| Post |
£5,000 - £10,000 |
| Telephone Interview |
£8,000 - £15,000 |
| Face-to-Face Interview |
£12,000 - £50,000 |
| Web-Based Survey |
£3,000 - £8,000 |
Clearly costs will vary
greatly, and will be different depending on the
organisation used. Some aspects that increase or decrease
costs include:
- Complex questionnaire design
will increase costs
- Comprehensive reporting of the survey
findings will increase costs
- the number of
questions or, more precisely, the number of
variables in the questionnaire
- the
number of open-ended questions
- the
number and type of reminders used in a postal survey
- the
sample design used, particularly in face-to-face
interview surveys. Here, cluster sampling
allows for more efficient data collection (but note,
it increases sampling error).
- the
need to include 'hard-to-reach' groups in the survey
- the response rate - a higher response rate is
our objective, but it does increase costs,
particularly data entry costs (but also survey
materials and postage).
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