Abstract

As universities are adapting a research-oriented thrust, their undergraduate students are expected to produce research papers. This may have been a heavy task before but with the advent of technology, students no longer find doing research particularly its data gathering aspect daunting. In fact, their data gathering procedure is most commonly done in the form of online survey because of its benefits. In this study, a survey among 215 research writing students and an interview with 20 research writing professors were conducted in order to identify their competencies and perceptions about the use of online surveys. This study found out that all the student respondents are adept and experienced in creating online survey; whereas, only 10% of the teachers have experienced doing an actual online survey. Further, this study showed that both student researchers and the teachers considered the ease and speed of administration as the two primary benefits in using online survey. Although both group of respondents agree with its benefits, they are only 50% confident of the accuracy of the online survey because they are aware of its vulnerability to pranks/prankster and susceptibility to manipulation of answers or survey results. They may have doubts but 68% of student researchers still used online survey and 90% of the teachers still allow the student researchers to use it. From these findings, a number of implications and suggestions were unfolded.