| Surveys are an invaluable tool for helping organizations stay abreast of issues within the corporate social environment. As the cost and pace of daily business increases, so does the need for high quality, cost-effective, timely, and efficient data collection. Because of the important role that surveys play in today's business world, it is imperative that the psychometrics of any administered survey be evaluated to assure its technical soundness.; Traditionally, surveys have been done using paper methodologies, which can be costly to administer in terms of time, labor, and materials. The advent of the Internet has dramatically increased the ease, reach, and speed of survey administration and data collection, while simultaneously decreasing associated costs, making surveys faster, easier and cheaper than ever before to leverage towards information gathering needs. While paper and web methods for disseminating surveys have often been considered to produce similar results, there is some evidence that people may respond differently depending on modality of administration, such that equivalence between the two should not be taken for granted.; The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric structure of an employee opinion survey tool, as well as to investigate the equivalence of the same tool administered via web and paper and pencil, from field data at a large fortune 500 industrial corporation. Data from a survey administered to employees via both paper and web methods was examined.; The Employee Opinion Survey was evaluated for soundness and internal reliability, and found to be both sound and internally reliable. Chronbach's Alpha scores revealed that survey sub-scale question groupings did in fact correlate reliably. A Scree test and Kaiser Guttman rule suggested the extraction of 9 factors, which were confirmed by an Exploratory Factor Analysis. Results from the comparison of web and paper survey dissemination modalities, indicate that for this particular survey, in the environment and with the population responding, there were no differences found between web and paper. There were, however, substantial differences found in responses between Hourly and Salaried employees. Results and their implications for the survey, the company, and future research relative to this study are discussed. |
