What’s My Favorite Survey Software?
A lot of web site recommend a “favorite” survey software program. Some of these sites are, of course, set up by the survey software company they are recommending and some of them are genuine. The reason that I don’t recommend one survey package overall of of the rest is two-fold: (1) I haven’t tried them all yet, so it wouldn’t be fair and (2) it really depends on your own personal need and financial situation.
For my own purposes, the survey system that I thinkI would like to have more than any other for my work purposes is SPSS Dimensions with mrInterviewer. I say “think” because other than viewing a demo, I haven’t spent a lot of time with the software. Nor will I in this lifetime. It is very much outside of my budget.
Would you want SPSS Dimensions? That depends. What I like about the software is that it is extremely configurable and includes a good mix of ease-of-use (if you enter your questions in one way) and programmability (it has scripting available, and you can pretty much control every element of the experience). It is also multi-model, so I could tie together all of my data collection (which includes internet research, paper surveys, kiosk surveys, and hand-held administered surveys). It also provides great capabilities for storing and organizing all my data.
ConfirmIt is another package that I’ve never used that looks really interesting — but once again, outside of my price range (to be fair — because of the way I do research, almost any service that charges based on response volume is going to ultimately cost a lot more for me than services that have a seat license or an overall installation license. So even though these services may be too expensive for me, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t work for you).
I’ll say again I haven’t used either of the packages I’ve described above. So please don’t take what I’ve said above as a recommendation one way or the other!
And then there are the other 120+ survey software solutions out there — some of which I’ve reviewed, most of them I haven’t. And if you read through this web site you probably will find several packages that I do in fact like — and some that I don’t. Take what you will from the reviews — I’ve tried to give enough (alright, more than enough) information to help you decide whether each package is right for you.
But until I’ve reviewed all of them (or at least most of them) I am not going to post a list of my favorites. I just don’t think it would be right.
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