Total 224 companies certified to ISO9001 /2 were sent a survey through
internet email from Nov-97 to Jun-98 . Companies were chosen at the condition that they
have email address being listed in the directory of ISO9000 certified companies in Hong
Kong (1998) printed by the Hong Kong trade development council.
The distribution of sample size among 224 target companies is as follows:-
ISO9001 108 ( 48.2% )
ISO9002 116 ( 51.8% )
ISO9001 & 2 8 ( 3.5% )
Although this sample size was not a significant one, it was still
reflected the actual practices from different industries (see section 3.2.1 for details) .
Based on the internet email channel existing, the feedback rate of the survey was expected
higher.
For the first stage , the first set of questionnaire was designed as
the web page to be located in the following web sites for collecting the feedback :-
https://members.tripod.com/~byeung/qs1.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Plaza/2280/qs1.htm
This survey form is not necessarily
supported by all browsers , but certainly supported by all recent versions of Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The request letters for this survey were issued
to the target companies through the internet email (see Appendix B) accordingly.
There is a trial run for the draft survey around 2 months to collect
the feedback and comment for the content and format of the survey before wide-scale
distribution to make sure that this survey is easy to understand and provides appropriate
data. This survey form was kept to be revised as running change to make it better and
accuracy.
However, the response rate was too low due to the re-active nature of
WWW . Therefore, the second stage for the collecting data was more pro-active through
internet email directly to inform and collect the target companies response instead of
placing the questionnaires in web site only. When through email , the target respondents
were focused on the director , Quality manager and IT manager mainly because the questions
being asked in the questionnaire required rather detailed knowledge about the company
's policy and their computer based management system with quality
issues.
There was improved for the response rate but still not satisfactory.
Thus, the further improvement on the format and content of questions in the questionnaire
was adopted in the third stage. The content in email was split into two parts with the
simplified and re-structured questions to present them in concise and specific way. The
communication channel was expanded from WWW and company email to telephone , fax, personal
email and interview (when necessary) too.
After finished the first email for the questions about the general
background of the company (Question D1, D2 ), the computerized status (Question A1-A3 ),
the computerization policy (B1, B2, C1) , the second email will be issued for follow-up
with in-depth questions about their computer system for current stage and in their future
plan , their comment on the software provider, etc.
All questions were designed to get the information about what the
existing computerization status of companies is ; what the feedback is from the existing
ISO9000 certificated companies who have already installed software for their quality
system ; and what kind of future software are required ; How the software provider can
help .
