Step 5: Collect Data

Data collection is as easy as sending out an email or manually sending them a link. You fill out an accompanying message and send out all the questionnaires to the employees. The message should inform them about the study’s purpose and set a deadline to answer it by. Ideally, you will already have told people about the study and taken questions about it.

If you prefer sending out the personal questionnaires yourself, you can get a list of links for each respondent without sending them out through Socilyzer. This would also be the way to do if you walk around collecting data on a tablet.

In case you send out surveys with Socilyzer, it is important that you provided correct email addresses when you set up the respondents on the People page in Socilyzer. Respondents each receive an email with a link to a questionnaire. Each of the questionnaires is marked with the respondent’s name, so respondents should only answer their own questionnaire.

For smaller studies it is not unlikely to reach a 100% response rate. This should be the aim for all studies. While you are still waiting for responses you can see who has yet to answer and you have the option to send them a reminder. If it seems unlikely that you will receive the missing answers you can end the data collection or conduct a preliminary study. This way you can get access to the social network visualization and statistics without a 100% response rate.