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WebSurvey@UW - Acquiring Email Addresses for Surveys

This document describes where to get email addresses for your survey mailings.

Sending surveys to everyone on campus or to all of your customers will soon train people to delete survey messages without reading them. Do not simply send to everyone. Select only classifications of participants that are appropriate for the topic of your study, (e.g., full-time vs part-time employees).

Select the smallest sample size that meets your needs. The figure may be smaller than you think. There are different formulas for calculating sample size. Creative Research Systems provides a sample size calculator. Response rates to web surveys typically range from 30-60%.

Internal Lists

Since most surveys are targeted to existing or potential customers/program participants, you should generally draw on email addresses from your own program information. This may entail “mining” data from your mailing lists, service records, sales data, registration forms, etc. Your department may also have existing mailing lists or a database from which to draw names.

Campus Mass Email

If you are surveying the campus community, you can request email addresses by following the instructions at the campus Mass Email service. There is a fee for creating these lists, and each emailing must receive prior approval from the campus data custodian (i.e., the Registrar's Office for students and the Budget Planning & Analysis for faculty/staff).

When you request a list through the campus mass email service, you will not be given direct access to the email addresses. The service will send out your survey message for you. If you do a follow-up message(s), you will need to work through the mass email service each time. You will have the ability to exclude users who’ve already responded or asked to be taken off the mailing list, however you will need to keep track of those names and provide them to the mass email service in order to have them eliminated from subsequent group emails.

As with any research conducted on campus, federal human subject regulations may apply. You should contact the UW Institutional Review Board and review any other relevant policies before implementing your project.

External Lists

There are a number of local, regional and national resources available from which you can purchase email lists that suit your needs.