The push-to-web design aims to maximise online responses, but we were aware that a significant proportion of people would not complete the survey.
The four most common reasons for non-completion were:
- Participant not opening the letter;
- Participant not then going online to complete the questionnaire;
- Participant not having online access; and
- Participant would prefer to complete a postal questionnaire.
Inclusion of a postal questionnaire at the second reminder (mailing 3) increased the likelihood of converting these reluctant respondents, though we recognise that a significant proportion of people would still not respond to the survey at all.
As detailed in Chapter 2, for practical reasons the postal questionnaire was much shorter than the online questionnaire and covered 16 pages.
The postal questionnaire was designed in conjunction with our survey methodologists and graphic designers. The aim was to produce a document that was as clear and concise as possible, thus reducing burden on participants and maximising response rates.
The questionnaire was printed on white, A4 paper in a landscape orientation and bound along the top edge. We included several design elements to help participants navigate the questionnaire, including:
- The questionnaire was printed mainly using three Sport England brand colours, with highlighted information symbols throughout; these were used to provide definitions or instructions where necessary;
- Arrows were included on rows of grids to indicate if an entire row needed to be completed as this had caused some confusion in the cognitive testing;
- Key instructions were underlined or emboldened; in some cases, a different colour was used to highlight specific information;
- Tick boxes were positioned as closely as possible to row text so there was no confusion around which option was being ticked;
- Where multiple options were available, alternative shading was used on each row.
Before sign-off, we asked the printer to provide physical copies of the questionnaire so we could establish the quality, and the look and feel of the questionnaire.
Storage of scanned images and survey results
All scanned images and survey data were stored on a secure server, which is isolated from the Ipsos network and has restricted access controls.
Our secure file servers are housed in server rooms/data centres with appropriate physical access controls and monitoring procedures.
The network is protected by appropriate use of firewalls, demilitarized zone (DMZ) and intrusion detection systems.
Using a DMZ perimeter network protects Ipsos’ internal local-area network (LAN) from untrusted traffic permitting access to untrusted networks, such as the internet, while ensuring the private network or LAN remains secure.
Public-facing servers are also appropriately protected and are based on a secure (minimum) two-tier or, our general standard, three-tier architecture.
All sub-contractors are subject to appropriate quality checks and second-party information security audits by our in-house Data Compliance team. We used AES256 as a minimum standard for encryption.