Swedish Internet Survey

by Per Olof Svärd

The purpose of the Internet Survey project being carried out by the Swedish Institute for Systems Development (SISU) is twofold. Firstly, relevant information about professional WWW usage in Sweden is gathered, analysed and presented. Secondly, the Web's viability as a powerful surveying medium is tested and demonstrated.

People in their working life contribute heavily to the increased Swedish WWW-usage. As more and more companies and organisations connect their own servers and homepages to the Web, an increasing number of people have access to the service via their work. Currently, there is little knowledge about how the Web is used professionally within these companies and organisations.

The Swedish Internet Survey deals with questions like:

• In what way does the Web contribute to work efficiency?
• What present and future applications for WWW technology are considered as important from a worklife perspective?
• What problems obstruct the effective use of the Web within organisations?
• What organisational motives exist for WWW investments?

The results of the survey will be reported during the spring of 1996.

The survey takes advantage of the easy to use, point-and-click interface provided by Web browsers of today. In the survey, the respondents answer questions by selecting options presented via radio buttons, check boxes and menus. As the gathering of data and the analysis process takes place in an electronic medium, errors that typically occur in surveying that rely upon human encoding of data, are removed.

The survey dynamically adapts based on respondent input. This reduces the complexity and number of questions presented to each respondent as only relevant questions are presented. It also means that the database of questions can be large while the number of questions presented to a particular respondent remains relatively small.

If a question is not answered it is automatically returned to the respondent for completion. This reduces the amount of unanswered questions, which is normally a problem of surveying.

Changes taking place over time are relevant for some questions and answers in the survey. Therefore the survey contains functions for longitudinal tracking. Respondents that have agreed may be contacted in the future to answer a sample of questions again.

More information on the survey project is available on the Web: http://www.sisu.se/projects/epi/epi.html

Please contact:
Per Olof Svärd - SISU
Tel: +46 8 752 1600
Email: pos@sisu.se