online surveys :: health & wellbeing
FabResearchOnline have many years experience in the design of survey content and the analysis of the data once collected. We work with you to produce the questions most likely to give the information you really need. Over the last few years, we have specialised in research aimed at the health and wellbeing of children and adults, including the ongoing Gloucestershire Online Pupil Survey.
We will build your survey, sort out the database, and offer online reporting using our reporting tool Lodeseeker™. We host both the survey and data on our secure server, which allows for ease of development on our side and assurance to your target recipients that anonymity can be assured (if you should need it). The data is, of course, yours and can be supplied in the usual electronic formats, such as Excel or csv should you not want to sign up to our Lodeseeker™ reporting option.
Although there are 'do it yourself' surveys to be found on the web that are very good (and sometimes free - see surveymonkey as a good example), we believe that if your project has any complexity, then getting help from experienced researchers is well worth the money. Not only are you more likely to produce questions that give you the information you are looking for, but the user experience will be a lot better - reflecting your company or organisation in a much better light.
Because we can respond to your individual needs, we can produce a survey that gives you exactly what you want. We can also take you through the whole process from planning to analysis so you get the most out of the data you gather.
We were commissioned through the Quatrosystem consortium, to provide an online survey for the Surrey & Sussex Health Care Trust who wished to ask GPs in their area for help in drawing up their next Clinical Health Strategy. Input from GPs is very important if they are to maintain the improvements to their Trust that are ongoing.
This is only part of the project, which also included a study of a sample of GPs who agreed to an in-depth telephone interview.
The questions were drawn up by a team of clinical and marketing personnel from the Trust together with our Research expert, who managed the process. The survey is accessible via an email link sent directly to the GPs - although in such a way as to ensure that the Trust has no way of linking individuals with responses so that the answers remain anonymous. The survey took 5 - 10 minutes to answer, perhaps longer if the recipient had a lot to say.
We made use of our sliders so that responses could be placed intuitively. There were also many text inputs which are initially hidden and only appeared if the response was less than or more than a certain value. For example, if the question was "how do you rate the performance of clinical surgery at the Trust" and the response was "very poor" a text box appeared with an additional question "please tell us why you think the performance is poor".
Inputs: As with other surveys, we have different methods of getting answers to our questions, including radio buttons, check boxes and free text input. However, our main method of collecting answers is based on a sliding 1000 point scale (0-100 with 1 decimal place) superimposed onto a categorical scale:
This replaces the normal array of radio buttons that you see on most surveys.
The advantage of this is that the respondents can choose where they want to be on the scale - they are not restricted to a choice between "very involved" and "quite involved" - they can choose to place their answer between the 2 - so they can say they are "involved".
The results are numbers - so, for example, "involved" might be recorded as 87.9 or it might be 82.3. This gives us the possibility to present the results as both a categorical scale (e.g. 87.9 would score in the "very involved" category, 82.3 would score in the "quite involved" category) or as a number - which means we can calculate averages as well as being able to do lots more statistical analyses.
Navigation: we have page navigation, which is triggered by a particular answer to a question - for example, if the question is "are you a boy or a girl?" we could either ask "boy" questions or "girl" questions depending on the answer.
Hidden questions: we can hide questions until a particular response is given, for example, a question "do you like ice cream?" could have a yes or no response. If the response is "yes", a further question could appear, for example "what flavour ice-cream do you like?". This avoids asking irrelevant questions to those who do not have an opinion or would not know how to answer and it also helps keep the survey pages shorter and less cluttered.
Design: 
we believe in good, appropriate design. For the NHS survey, colours are muted and 'adult' - for our schools surveys, on the other hand, we have bright colours, populated with interesting and funny cartoon frogs so that interest is maintained throughout the survey. The children enjoy the experience and remember the survey positively, so when they are asked to do it again, they are pleased to do so.
Together with primainfo, Foster & Brown Research offer online survey and reporting as a managed package, taking you through the process of gathering the information and helping you to make sense of the answers.
Foster & Brown Research offers a complete consumer research service, using market research techniques to investigate product acceptance, branding, pricing strategies as well as many more.
Foster & Brown Research has experience in public consultation surveys and business surveys, using several methods, including face-to-face interviews, online surveys, focus groups and sensory panels.
primainfo is the technology partner behind Fabresearch Online and in addition to developing online surveys can also offer online applications and reporting systems.
lbgraphics offers creative design for both web and print, including web graphics, brochures, posters, business cards, illustrations and many more.
Sioux Peto of lbgraphics is also an exciting artist, using both computer graphics to produce unique canvasses suitable for office and public areas and found materials to make unusual and stimulating artworks.