Reccomendations for survey websites

Hello

we have a lot of people posting surveys on TSR and I thought it would be useful to pull together some recommendations and limitations on the different websites you can use to host surveys.

Once we get some of your answers we can integrate this into this article (How to get survey responses on TSR) or create an article just for this :smile:

.

The most common at the moment seem to be:

Google Forms

I've heard good things about Google Forms but haven't used it. It would be useful to get some feedback from people who used it. From a survey completer point of view I don't like the layout of google forms surveys - on a PC they sit in the middle of the screen and you have to scroll down much more than necessary.

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Survey Monkey

The big player. The options for free accounts are very limited from experience.

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Qualtrics

A lot of universities subscribe to this for academic research. Is it any good?

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Thoughts about the following would be useful:

* Pros and cons
* How easy was it to use to set up the survey?
* What features were available (types of questions, number of questions, logic etc)?
* How easy was it to export/analyse your results?
* how did the survey look when it was done?
* Was it free and did it offer good value for money?

Are we all missing out on some amazing survey sites?

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

Kvothe the Arcane

Google Docs

Pros and cons
Pros

•

Free with no number cap.

•

Can share editing privileges with a number of people.

•

Logic branching. I.e. Survey can change based upon previously selected answers

•

Visual display and integration with other google apps.

•

Results easily outputted into spreadsheet where further analysis and things like custom formatting and duplicate merging can can be done.

Cons

•

Limited templates

•

No integration with popular e-commerce sites for business users.

•

No wizard help and not very user friendly.

How easy was it to use to set up the survey?

Not that complicated for an intermediate-advanced computer user but as above, not very user friendly.

How easy was it to export/analyse your results?
Exportation was easy. When I used it, the analysis tools were limited however there were a range of graphical methods to display the data.

How did the survey look when it was done?
Pretty drab but I did not use the custom theme facility which was available.

Was it free and did it offer good value for money?

Completely free. It has its limitations. I don't think it's as simple as "you get what you pay for". It serves a purpose and can be useful.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 2

Naomibill

I used survey monkey - it's the first time I've made my own survey. It has quite limited options for free, you're only allowed 10 questions and I also would have liked the option to direct people to different questions based on their answers but that is a premium option so I had to modify my questions a bit.

Reply 3

CarolineThomas

Qualtrics is amazing. You can do the following things

- Randomise questions
- Adapt it to work on a mobile phone
- Track where respondents found the link using survey strings
- Use display logic so people see questions dependent on their answers
- Adapt the look and design of your questionnaire
- Prevent people from taking it more than once
- Set quotas for respondents
- Set different branches and endings for people

Plus their customer service is incredible. As it is in America they will reply to you in the afternoons and evening and even at midnight sending you tailor made videos to answer all questions.

Best bet is to do lots of other peoples surveys and see what they are like in comparison. I think Qualtrics is a lot better than Google Doc and Survey Monkey but if your uni does not have an account then you are capped at 100 responses.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 4

ReginaHo

Hi there

Wanted to share a few thoughts on Qualtrics:

* Pros: lots of options and set-ups possible, very advanced set-up
* Con: might be tricky to get into if it is your first survey ever
* How easy was it to use to set up the survey?
I found it not complicated, particularly as help videos and tutorials on any question one can think of are available...easy enough to guide oneself through the setup djungle.
* What features were available (types of questions, number of questions, logic etc)?
Multiple Choice, Matrix Table, Free Text Entry, Descriptive Text, Graphic Box, Sliders, Rank Order, Side by Side table and all sorts of advanced questions with and without predefined automatic answer choices.
Important to think through ones type of analysis before setup. Set up in blocks of single or multiple questions possible, after the basic setup structuring of the survey flow possible by setting up the order of the blocks and randomizing functions, etc.
* How easy was it to export/analyse your results?
Easy to export into SPSS or Excel, however, variables have funny names, renaming necessary
* how did the survey look when it was done?
Clearly structured, choice between different layouts possible
* Was it free and did it offer good value for money?
Was purchased by my university and offered through them.

Hope this mini-feedback on Qualtrics is a bit helpful :smile:

Best,
Regina

Reply 5

natashazierhofer

surveycircle lets you get free replies - as long as you fill in a number of other surveys as well. I managed to get many replies for my survey :smile:

Reply 6

jvpickering

Psytoolkit.org is great for both surveys and cognitive tests. It involves code, but they have tutorials and guides. Took me less than a day to understand everything.

Reply 7

Fran145

PLEASE HELP ME OUT!
I'm collecting data for my dissertation and wondered if you would like to participate by filling out a survey online which will take less than 10 minutes? I would really appreciate it if you could spare the time to fill this survey out. If you are able to fill it out, please could you put in your UNIVERSITY EMAIL ADDRESS when it asks for your email address as I am collecting data only from university students and therefore need to verify that only students are taking part. Thank you in advance!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRtDM2OQTOs9W3YuZvu-yhoahpMWRclwp-ukBd4GSGGicprQ/viewform?

Reply 8

Jonas_

Original post by natashazierhofer

surveycircle lets you get free replies - as long as you fill in a number of other surveys as well. I managed to get many replies for my survey :smile:

Hi Natasha, that sounds great! Thanks for sharing your experience :-)

Reply 9

prayercollins1

could someone please complete my survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NT2J3QH

Reply 10

MusCog

Original post by jvpickering

Psytoolkit.org is great for both surveys and cognitive tests. It involves code, but they have tutorials and guides. Took me less than a day to understand everything.

Another vote for psytoolkit. It's particularly good if you're doing an experiment rather than a survey. I agree it's easy to learn the code, and the developer is quick to respond if you need to ask anything that's not covered by the extensive documentation

Reply 11

MIBarker

Hi,

I've used both Survey Monkey and Qualtrics. Survey Monkey is much easier to get started with. It's very simple and self-explanatory. Qualtrics takes longer to get the hang of (I had to watch a lot of Youtube tutorials), but there are many more features on Qualtrics. E.g. you can create different conditions, so some participants see one version of the questionnaire and other people see another. You can set Qualtrics to randomly allocate the participants to different conditions so there are an equal number in each, or you can instruct it to allocate certain people to different conditions based on their answers to earlier questions. There are also things like 'skip logic' - so in my current questionnaire, if a person answers that they are under 18, they are automatically sent to the end of the questionnaire, because it's for over 18s only. But you could get it to skip to any point in the survey. E.g. If a person says they haven't been to university, you can set it to skip questions about their degree. In addition, there are features like being able to code answers with different values (e.g. a likert-type scale might range from -3 to 3, or from 1 to 7) and it will work out averages for you, you can randomize the order of questions, easily pick up and drag individual questions or whole question blocks around, and you can export results as an SPSS file (especially useful for psychology students like me). Finally, there just seem to be more options for formatting the way the questionnaires looks on Qualtrics.

It's hard to explain all the extra features in a quick post but if you're doing a social sciences degree like me I would definitely say it's worth getting the hang of qualtrics, especially if you're doing higher level statistics with the results. However, it does take a bit more time to get used to, and that is assuming the you have access to Qualtrics because I'm not sure if it's free to use. (I suspect my university had to buy a license.) On the other hand, if you were doing a design degree, and you wanted to know which of four designs people preferred, and you weren't planning on doing any complex statistics with your results, then survey monkey will do everything you need and be less difficult to use.

Hope this helps!

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 12

KatrionaJ

BOS Bristol online survey is great.

Could you please do my survey? It will take 2 mins
https://coventry.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/consumer-decision-making-process

Reply 13

Jonas_

I'm not a Millennial, I guess. Or, how exactly do you define Millennial ;-) ?

Reply 14

KatrionaJ

Please answer my survey for my dissertation! It will take 2 mins and will be much appreciated xxx

https://coventry.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/consumer-decision-making-process

Reply 15

may kont

Done, do you mind also doing mine? :smile:

https://universityofsussex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eA6bkIVNhCeze73

Reply 16

Pien T

I checked out all three survey builder websites, and I paid special attention the fact whether it is free to create a survey, or not! Google Forms is really easy to use and builds nice looking surveys. You can create as many surveys as you want, and collect as many respondents as you need. Also important: it's free.
However, in my experience if you are looking for a more detailed survey with more features, I would recomment Qualtrics! However, you have to pay for the special features, and also collecting your data with Qualtrics (free account) is harder, because there are a lot of limitations when you use the free account. Such as only 1 active survey, and only a limited amount of respondents can fill in your survey.
Last but not least, SurveyMonkey. Easy to use, nice looking surveys and nice survey features. However, also creating a free account on surveymonkey has some limitations. You can only create 10 different questions, and only collect 100 respondents for your survey. Overall, I would use Google Forms, as a free survey builder, since I can create as many surveys as I need, and collect as many respondents.

Lately, I use SurveySwap to collect my respondents for free. You can just upload your survey, and collect free respondents. You only have to take surveys from others, and then I collect all the respondents I need. It is also a survey builder, one who works perfectly fine too.

Reply 17

09aomalley

Google forms is the easiest to use it compiles all of the data collected into tables automatically

If you are over 18, have every online shopped and have used a chatbot please complete my dissertation questionnaire about Artificial Intelligence in the Fashion Industry

No IT knowledge is required as all of the terms are explained!

https://goo.gl/forms/V1FnTseY4mGixJMd2

Reply 18

eddnoon

Regarding the site to use, from my experience, Qualtrics is my favourite. Find it easy to use, and the export to SPSS feature saves SO much time!

However, I would be interested in hearing people's tips regarding how they get responses to their online surveys, as I am struggling to get responses!