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Postal Surveys |
| Many of our research projects are supported by postal surveys. In the last 10 years we have administered hundreds of postal surveys ranging in size from 100 to 20,000 cases. Key issues in ensuring a successful postal survey include: questionnaire design and layout, anticipated response, sampling strategies, and decisions concerning reminders. Informed coding of open data and verified data processing. |
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Web Surveys |
| This is an extremely effective way of capturing data among certain populations. It is becoming increasingly popular with clients as it enables faster and more accurate data collection and is time efficient and cost effective, especially for certain populations (e.g. in house, office based, employee surveys).
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Telephone surveys |
Employment Research has direct access to a large number of experienced interviewers that can undertake both face-to-face and telephone interviewing across the UK. This methodology is most effectively deployed when a minimum number of respondents is required and the response rate to a postal survey is likely to be low. As well as good questionnaire design and sample, it is essential to use experienced interviewers for this type of work.
Recently Employment Research has conducted a telephone survey of 1000 employers on behalf of IES and the Health and Safety Executive, a survey of Welsh employers, including language translation and Welsh speaking interviews and a survey of employers about migrant workers. |
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Qualitative research |
Often to support the design of survey materials and provide an understanding of the pertinent issues for a research project but also as a methodology in its own right Employment Research uses the following approaches: |
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Semi structured interviewing:
This is used frequently when eliciting the views of individuals linked to key stakeholder organisations. |
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Focus groups:
Most often employed to assist the design and testing of survey questionnaires. However, they have also been used in helping to understand the views of students, groups of employees and in evaluation research. |
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World Café events:
These are used as less formal means of understanding issues concerned with organisations and can be very effective especially when the issues being investigated are complicated and sensitive. |
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Secondary analysis research |
| Gaining a full understanding of research undertaken previously on a given issue can be an important element especially in scoping the parameters of the research proposed. This might involve a review of published literature, gathering secondary data and undertaking further analysis, eg. Labour Force Surveys; Department of Health Workforce Census. |
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