Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) is a survey methodology based on a questionnaire provided with a link, a panel or a website, and it is similar to the CATI methodology. CAWI is considered the most economical way to collect data because it does not need interviewers, research devices, neither involves costs linked to the respondent. For all these reasons CAWI surveys, which are also called online surveys, are one of the most used methods to collect information. When you are opting for CAWI, all the attention is focused on the questionnaire design, because the quality of data collected is directly linked to one of the questionnaires itself. When your CAWI research project needs a personal touch or the guidance of experienced research, Thakur International, Nepal is the right choice. Our professional interviewing team can tackle any CAWI research project. When the internet was not an everyday companion in everyone´s life, you could reach with CAWI just around 20 percent of the population. That is to say that it was used just for limited purposes.
Nowadays with CAWI, you can interview wide and generic population, such as an entire country and a multinational corporation. CAWI method envisages a link which is sent to the respondents via email. They just have to follow the link to complete the questionnaire independently.
The CAWI software autonomously sends the emails and takes care of their following classification. Finished surveys are marked as complete and they do not need extra controls. The respondent is invited via email and clicks on the link in order to answer the CAWI questionnaire. Obviously, you need to have the email address of the responder to carry out a CAWI survey.
Many companies have been using the internet to conduct all sorts of studies all over the world. Whether it is a market or scientific research, the online CAWI survey has been a faster way of collecting data from the respondents as compared to the other survey methods such as a paper-and-pencil method or personal interviews. Moreover, the web-based survey presents other pros for anyone who wishes to conduct a survey. However, we should always consider also the drawbacks and disadvantages of the CAWI survey method.
Besides the possibility to drastically reduce survey costs, CAWI is also convenient for other reasons:
When you highly reduce survey costs you have to calculate some inevitable disadvantages that can somehow change the research quality. One of those could be the lack of an interviewer as help and guide composing the questionnaire. Moreover, somebody has not an internet connection, so the target will be wide but not universal. Another thing is that with the online questionnaire you may lose the attention of the respondents and this increase the possibilities to get a low quality or incomplete surveys. Other disadvantages are:
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