Sequential mixed-mode surveys: An application on education faculties in Turkey

The main purpose of using different data collection methods is to collect the best quality data by taking the budgetary constraints into consideration. In the literature, although there are a lot of studies for comparing web and e-mail data collection methods, there is no study in which telephone, e-mail and web data collection methods are applied with sequential mixed mode design and the results are compared. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of different methods of data collection, such as telephone, web and e-mail on the quality of collected data. The reason why the research is carried out on the education faculties is that the teacher education system is of great importance for the world and our country. Three different questionnaires which are prepared for three different data collection methods, were sent to 96 deans who work in education faculties in Turkey. e-mail mode at the first step; web mode in the second stage, and third step telephone interview mode was applied and 17, 12 and 5 deans answered respectively. The highest response rate was obtained from the e-mail method. When the answers to the questionnaires were examined, it was observed that no particular problems about item-nonresponse or open-ended questions existed. It was observed that in the telephone interview, interviewers offered more additional information during the interview. However, numerical questions in the telephone interview could not be given as clear numbers. On the other hand, the importance of the location of the interviewer at the time of the interview was understood. From the answers to the questionnaire, it was understood that the problem area which should be solved most urgently about the teacher education system was the enter the education faculties and the training process in the faculties of education. According to the respondents, Turkey's historically most important problem areas for teacher education system was these areas. As a result, when the target population has a small size, what it is possible to have access to contact information, and where the education level of respondents is high, it is considered that choosing the web mode will have a higher response rate. But it should not be forgotten that more information will be abandoned.