When I help law firms, law departments and legal vendors conduct online surveys, they usually ask about the tempo of sending reminder emails to those invited to participate. In other words, after the initial email introduction with the survey link that you blast out to outside counsel, all the paralegals in the firm, the R&D clients above Manager, or whomever, how long do you wait to remind them that they should complete the survey?
One of the frustrations of conducting surveys on behalf of law firms, law departments or legal vendors arises from the partial responses that are occasionally returned. By partial response, I mean that the respondent has not answered a material number of the questions on the questionnaire or has plugged in for some questions obviously unconsidered answers, such as all “2’s” on 10 straight 1-10 evaluation questions. In my comments below I treat the two situations the same.
Some online surveys by law firms or law departments collect data that is in a currency other than US dollars. When a survey question asks for monetary data, as did the recent survey I conducted for a group of law firm professionals that asked for base and bonus data, the instructions to the question should specify that the data be entered in dollars. More specifically, the instructions should clearly explain the conversion factor and how the respondent should apply it, such as “Convert Canadian dollars at a rate of 1.3 per US dollar. Therefore, divide the Canadian amount by 1.3.” Each respondent then has the responsibility to enter the correct, recalculated US dollar amount.