I have never used Survey Monkey before but purchased a month’s subscription for my practicum.  It is VERY user friendly to those of you who have never used it.  I completed my 20 question survey this weekend and met with my site coordinator today in 70 degree New England weather, sipping iced coffee, and overlooking the mighty Merrimack River (not bad, huh?).  She was very pleased with my progress and the questions I created – yay! – and we had a nice discussion on survey bias.

We’re using Constant Contact to send out an e-blast to our membership tomorrow and are hoping for a high response rate (goal:  n=500 completed surveys).  We have set short and long term goals for follow-up and have identified ways to reach unopened emails or non-completed surveys; we are also offering a completion incentive and have identified marketing strategies to reach a larger population so we can obtain valid results and a realistic insight into the community’s nutrition needs and knowledge.  We hope to have data to review by the end of June with a goal of analyzing data in July.

We are working on another survey to a sub-population about which I’ll be speaking during my article critique tomorrow night in 794A.  All very exciting stuff.