The Law Society - Diversity Census Online Questionnaire
As the national regulatory body for all solicitors in England and Wales, The Law Society wished to
conduct a census of its 140,000 members in order to collect data on a range of equality
and diversity issues.
Traditional questionnaires often average a low response rate, are extremely expensive
to conduct and are not easily accessible to all readers. Such a low response and
poor level of accessibility would not fulfil the informational requirements that
the Law Society recognised as essential nor justify the anticipated expenditure.
SynergiDesign conducted the campaign, built the software, collated the results
and achieved very high success rates.
"The level of activity generated by these campaigns met or exceeded our expectations."
"SynergiDesign accomplished the above tasks to very tight timescales. They listened
to and understood our requirements, offered sound, thoughtful advice, and delivered
on or before our deadlines. I have no hesitation in recommending SynergiDesign
for such tasks. Their expert, timely assistance has allowed us to make significant
progress on a sensitive, business-critical project."
John Rieger - The Law Society
Building the Survey Web Application
Having decided to conduct their survey online, The Law Society selected SynergiDesign
to carry out the technical development of their questionnaire web applicaition.
The data to be collected were highly sensitive, relating as they did to sexuality,
disability, race, gender, etc. and SynergiDesign was subjected to the Law Society’s
stringent supplier criteria before being authorised to carry out the project.
Trusted Partner; handling the sensitive information
Implicit in the contract was the trust that the Law Society put in SynergiDesign
to handle and collect this sensitive information in a secure and responsible way.
The software developed as a result of this exclusive partnership demonstrates the
highest technical standards, able to master all the security and accessibility issues
involved and meeting with the conclusive approval of the Law Society.
The resulting Questionnaire System
created by SynergiDesign comprised a secure, interactive, highest web standards
compliant, accessible online document. It also featured a questionnaire system to
track the response of each respondent, enabling the data collected to be integrated
eventually within the Law Society’s central records system.
Success of the online questionnaire
The response rate to the questionnaire exceeded the expectations of Law Society’s
Communications Unit; this was to a large degree attributable to the accessibility,
interactivity and ease of operation of the online document. After completion of
the analysis, the Law Society was able to confirm that they had saved a huge percentage
of the cost of administering a traditional questionnaire, whilst achieving a high
standard of essential information that was easy to store, utilise and apply.
W3C AAA accessibility
The nature of the questionnaire demanded that it be constructed to the highest standards
of web accessibility, ie W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Triple A,
an area in which SynergiDesign has extensive experience.
Intelligent programming
The questions on the questionnaire were intelligently programmed so as to trigger
further appropriate, individualised questions to mine detailed information about
each of the respondents.
A successful working relationship
"SynergiDesign accomplished the above tasks to very tight timescales. They listened
to and understood our requirements, offered sound, thoughtful advice, and delivered
on or before our deadlines. I have no hesitation in recommending SynergiDesign
for such tasks. Their expert, timely assistance has allowed us to make significant
progress on a sensitive, business-critical project."
John Rieger - The Law Society
SynergiDesign have enjoyed an extended contract with The Law Society as a result
of their successful work on the questionnaire.