Touching on surveys

Today we started to look at how we are going to run our patient survey (probably over the summer).

We will be using one of the NPA-endorsed companies to help us carry out the survey and we’ve been discussing whether we should go for the touch screen survey or the paper-based survey.

We decided that we will use the paper-based package since it will suit our patient population much better.

The main thing against the touch screen survey for us is that we can envisage all the children playing with it; and we feel that our high elderly population will be more comfortable with paper and pen rather than with a touch screen.

I also personally feel that the paper-based survey will encourage more useful patient feedback from the open question at the end of the survey (i.e. ‘Do you have any other comments?’).