We are starting to publicise our web survey and hoping that many people will fill it in - this is very different to other surveys that I have carried out, where I have always known how many people we are sending the survey to, and had a good idea of the anticipated response rate. We are trying to gather qualitative information from this survey and so of course accept that the people who fill it in will not be 'representative' in the sense that we use it in survey research. This has had me thinking rather a lot about the web, and who it reaches, and who it doesn't.
I have become really conscious, through doing this research, of divisions in society based on our increasing use of internet and web technology. I was told this week by one of our respondents that applications for a swap with their housing association are now all done online, and she is supposed to log on every week to register her continued interest. This is a complete impossibility for them as they do not have access to the internet, and help and assistance, or an advocate to do this for them, are not available. They need a swap as the stairs to their flat have become impossible to manage. This echoes much of the exclusion that we heard about the banking sector in the focus groups that we ran. I do feel very angry about this, and about the way in which things are organised for the convenience of the bureacratic organisation rather than the citizens we are supposed to serve.
I do see that by setting up a web survey we are guilty of this ourselves, and am torn by the ability that the web offers to reach large, dispersed numbers of people and automate the collection of information, as against those who we do not reach by using this format. I suppose that this is the reason that we are using a number of methods to gather data for this project, including the focus groups and interviews, and the ELSA dataset, where information is collected by personal appointments with thousands of households. But the other side of this is to remember that millions of older people do have internet connections and computers and that we need to be careful not to create a discourse that paints everyone over 65 as a helpless, disconnected, disenfranchised person. The message is to cater for all people, to recognise diversity, and to work out what people need and want for different purposes. I am sorry that we are only running this survey on the web but at the same time, I hope that it will reach some of the millions of those who do have internet connections.
