Exploring a New Research Method in Diversity Research

This study explores an innovative mixed mode of mail drop and online survey, to examine if it can serve as a cost-effective data-collection method to obtain statistics about Internet users. By using the multi-stage stratified sampling method, this study has reduced sampling problems to the minimum. The most important mechanism is that the sample was obtained at random. This eliminates self-selection problems. Based on the observation from certain basic findings from this online survey and another nation-wide face-to-face interview survey, the Internet users’ demographic profiles obtained from these two studies are quite similar.