Qualtrics survey software from Utah-based Qualtrics is an excellent web-based survey software package that offers a fantastic array of question types, a well-designed survey development interface, good fielding/survey promotion capabilities and a powerful reporting engine. It has both panal management features and multi-users capabilities and should definitely be a contender if you’re a corporate research department or academic organization looking for a survey system.  (more…)

Who said that writing and taking surveys can’t be fun?

PerkyPoll is a new “collaborative polling site” which allows you to create simple surveys that can easily be integrated into blogs, web sites, and presumably other collaborative sites such as facebook or Myspace. Although I probably wouldn’t suggest that you use it for serious research, it does have some unique elements that might make it especially entertaining if you’re looking for a simple way to collect and share survey results on a non-business critical topic. (more…)

It is probably fair to say that most online survey software companies get many (if not most, or even all) of their customers view the web. Many of them count on search engines, and those that do try to optimize their sites to drive as much traffic as possible. My only problem is when they “cheat” by posting fake reviews by fake people, comparing themselves to other products when the fact of the matter is that these comparisons aren’t really fair or valid.

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SurveyMethods (at SurveyMethods.com) is a basic online survey software package that does OK on its own but doesn’t really offer the features of many of the other survey software packages it competes with. And while it is not a software package I’d be likely to recommend (there are even free survey software packages that provide more than SurveyMethods does), it is free to try — so you can make your own decision! (more…)

SPSS has announced the release of SPSS Dimensions 5.0, an upgrade to last year’s version 4.5. Although in my opinion this feels more like an incremental release, it does have some notable new features including the SPSS Desktop Author, a new customizable question wizard, better integration with SPSS Predictive Enterprise Repository and SPSS Report. (more…)

SurveyGizmo is among the most easy to use, best priced, feature packed internet survey software packages I have seen. And I’ve seen a number of them. I highly recommend it. And if you’re conducting fewer than 250 responses a month, it is absolutely free and includes just about everything you need. And it’s easy…very Web 2.0ish.

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Confirmit 12 has been officially released and it features a variety of interesting features that look like they will have a positive impact on both survey developers and users.

For those who don’t know, Confirmit is one of the most prominent online survey software packages. It is used by a number of market research agencies and allows for pretty complicated, interesting surveys. Frankly, I would probably use Confirmit if I could except for the fact that the price tag is higher than I want/need/can afford to spend.

Points to Confirmit for making part of their new release about improving the user experience: some of the new features include a new hierarchy selector (which could be used, say, to let you pick a state and then narrow it down to the city); a new slider for entering numbers (not the first time such a feature has been implemented in a survey software package both GMI and Vovici offer sliders too) which could be fun for scale-type questions; a card sort feature, which allows the respondent to drag and drop responses into different piles. Two improvements I especially like are the "highlight required grid input field" which can be used to show the user precisely which answer they forgot to fill in and the AJAX dynamic content, which makes it possible for other questions to appear or disappear on the page depending on the results of other questions on the same page (without a page refresh).

Confirmit 12 also allows for different images to appear in answers depending on the state of the response. Simply put, this means that you can have one image shown when the answer is not selected (such as an empty check box) and replace it with a different image when the image is selected (such as a checked check box).

Confirmit 12 has new security features as well, although to my untrained eye they don’t seem all that exciting. That is, they’re not so much about protecting the data as much as they are about encrypting the information that is shown to the respondent (so they can’t figure out your secret methodologies). Confirmit 12 does make it possible to set an option that requires the survey to be conducted over a secure, encrypted connection.

Confirmit adds new survey development features, including additional information within the context of the project overview, the ability to increase the size of text box text, and an easier to use URL setup page. The scripting editor also includes a code completion feature similar to what you might find in Visual Studio or Flash. This feature makes it easier to write code by suggesting functions, methods, and properties that are context appropriate.

On the back-end, Confirmit 12 includes a new data processing engine which adds new data import features, data cleaning, recoding and merging features, and new data exports.

Confirmit Express, the simpler version of the survey system, also includes a variety of new features such as a new user administration interface, MS Word export and the ability to quickly and easily test surveys.

For a full list of new features, see the Confirmit web site.

• Confirmit 12 new feature list
• Confirmit 12 web site

The latest example of a web review that appears to be publishing fake reviews is http://researchthink.com/, which promotes SurveyMethods.com. This is supposedly the “blog” of John Bates from New York — a self-styled “research, marketing and Six Sigma professional” who is “already swamped working 6 days a week” who took the time to assemble his blog “to help out individuals that are new to survey research.” But in reality it appears to be an SEO front for SurveyMethods.com.

On his site, John reviewed five software packages: SurveyMethods.com, QuestionPro.com, Zoomerang.com, SurveyMonkey.com, and KeySurvey.com. His pick? SurveyMethods.com with a 9 out of 10 rating. The price is so good it gave John “reverse sticker shock!” It was extremely easy to use, full of features, and has a strong set of analysis tools — better than any of the other products reviews for sure! (SurveyMonkey.com was reduced to 6 out of 10 points because it didn’t include spell check). Zoomerang got zonked to 7.5 because it “cluttered.”

It is no surprise that in John’s estimation, SurveyMethods.com is “hands down the winner in online web based survey software.”

John doesn’t just publish his survey reviews at researchthink.com though — he also maintains a blog at http://researchthink.blogspot.com/ where he maintains the exact same content. Meanwhile, the domain researchthink.com is privately registered.

Is researchthink.com a fake SEO sham created to promote surveymethods.com? I think so!

Conducting an online survey yourself is fairly easy, but it does require a few ingredients (other than the survey itself). If you can come up with these three things you can probably execute your own customer survey online:

1. You need to select some a survey system. This part is fairly easy to come by as there are all sorts of options out there to choose from. If you don’t expect to do a lot of surveying then you are probably OK to use a fairly low cost option. If you’re doing it for a real life professional business I would be careful not to do it on a free system that doesn’t let you remove their branding (there is nothing more tacky then having your survey end on the surveymonkey signup page – your survey should end on your home page or something similar). If you’re going to show images, make sure that you choose a system that makes it easy for you to upload and insert images – don’t choose a system that makes you upload the images to your own web server since that will make things too complicated (especially if you don’t have a web site).

2. You need respondents. This is often the most tough part of conducting a survey online – you need to find people, preferably customers, to take your survey. If you have a web site you can definitely solicit your web site visitors to take your survey, keeping in mind that you don’t want to do anything that will stop them from making purchases. One option is to invite past customers to take your survey – hopefully you have plenty of e-mail address from past customers, and a carefully worded, friendly e-mail to them may get enough of them to take your survey – especially if you make it clear to them that you’ll be using their feedback in the development of your new products. If you don’t have any e-mail addresses and you want to get your feedback from a group of non-customers, then what you may want to do is rent an outside survey panel. You’ll pay upwards of $5 or more per response, but if the feedback is important enough, it may be worth it to you.

3. You need to offer an incentive. There are probably many people who will take your survey for free. Maybe they like you, maybe they like your product, or maybe they just like to take surveys. In most cases, there won’t be a enough people like this to give you a fleshed out sample. By introducing a simple incentive – the chance to win a drawing or even some kind of an exclusive discount – you can greatly increase the number of people who will take your survey without significantly increasing your costs. For example, one of my favorite incentives is to offer a chance to win a $200 gift certificate to giftcertificates.com. You’ll double or even triple your response rate which means that the quality of your responses will be significantly higher without spending significantly more money overall.

Julie Lemaster, an MBA student at the University of California- Riverside, has written an interesting paper (which is posted to the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing web site) entitled "Online Panel Management and Strategies: An Introduction for Managers." It is an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their companies.

Lemaster contrasts full-service providers, such as M/A/R/C and SSI against complex and potentially expensive "self-serve" packages from Confirmit, Globalpark, GMI, and SurveyZ to low cost providers such as QuestionPro, Survey.com, SurveyMoney, and Zoomerang.

The abstract of the paper summarizes it as providing…

"…an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their company.  The size of the company you work for does not matter, as we will discuss several methods that can be used for any size company or investment level.  This paper is for managers who want to quickly learn the basic issues of online market research panels.  It will also be useful to managers who need to become familiar with some of the major providers of online panel management."

In addition to reviewing the providers and the various strategies for organizing your panel, Lemaster discusses a variety incentives that can be used to motivate and retain participants, such as lotteries, bonus points, and raffles.

• Online Panel Management and Strategies: An Introduction for Manager

It would appear that SurveySoftwareReviews.com is published — or at least sponsored by — Prezza Technologies to promote Prezza Checkbox Survey software using fake reviews of Checkbox and competitors.

I have a number of Google alerts set up to help me keep up to date with new research related stuff on the web. I was going through it today when I noticed a survey software review on a web site called “SurveySoftwareReviews.com” that I had never remembered seeing before. Upon visiting the site, it appeared to contain reviews of Perseus SurveySolutions 6, Prezza Technologies’ Checkbox Survey Server, classapps SelectSurvey ASP, SNAP Surveys, Apian SurveyPro, ConfirmIt, Inquisite, KeySurvey, Quask, Raosoft, SPSS and Vovici. (more…)

SPSS recently put out a news release (which has been picked up by at least two news sites CRM Today and TMCnet) whose sole purpose appears to be to scare companies away from using the plethora of survey research tools in favor of their multi-modal survey system. How can you begin to know what your customers are thinking, reasons the release, if you only ask those who are online when hardly anyone is even using the Internet these days?

"Web-based surveys may appear to be less intrusive and easier to conduct, but without pen and paper or a good ‘old-fashioned’ telephone, organizations miss the opinions of many, including those without a computer, the forever and selectively computer illiterate and a large part of the senior population that simply missed the tech revolution."

The release goes on to remind everyone that paper and phone survey are "in many cases essential, if organizations expect to present clients with the most accurate and complete view of customer attitutes and opinions." 

It then proves its point by referring to a recent Pew report:

"In fact, the Pew Internet & American Life Project recently found 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use modern gadgetry and many others bristle at electronic connectivity — the Internet."

Wow. Who would have thought that in 2007 more than half of the US population either doesn’t use and/or extremely dislikes the Internet. We all may need to rethink our online programs and go back to the phone banks, door-to-door solicitors and shopping malls many of us have mostly abandoned.

…but before we do, here are some stats not included in the SPSS release:

• Total US population is about 300 million people with 225 million of them over the age of 17. (US Census)
• There are 178.8 million web users in the US (comScore, June 2007)
• 71% of all adults are online (Pew)
• 87% of 18-24 year olds, 83% of 30-49 year olds, 65% of those 50-64 and 32% of those over 65 are online. (Pew)
• 73% of white, 62% of black, and 78% of English-speaking Hispanic are online. (Pew)
• 73% of people living in Urban/Surburban Environments and 60% living in rural areas are online. (Pew)
• 93% of those earning $75K+, 82% of those earning $50K-$74K, 69% of those earning $30K-$49K and 55% of those earning less than $30K are online. (Pew)
• Total number of households is 105.4 million (US Census)
• Almost 70% of US households have Internet access at home.  (Leichtman Research Group Q1 2007)
• 53% of US households have high-speed access (Leichtman Research Group Q1 2007)

The Pew study that SPSS refers to in their release is called "A Typology of Information and Communication Technology User." The study measures not whether or not people have internet access (as implied by SPSS) but instead tries to categorize people by the degree to which information and communication technologies are utilized and enjoyed.

According to the report, only 15% of the population can be characterized as "Off the Network" — that is, individuals with neither cell phones nor internet connectivity. They tend to be in their mid-60s, nearly three-fifths are women. Only 7% have college degrees (vs. the US average of 27%) and only 4% earn over $75K a year (vs. the US average of 22%). They are the heaviest users of "old media" such as radio and TV but do not have the inclination to try new information and communication technology.

Obviously, not everyone is online and if you’re looking for a particularly special group you may want to revert to paper, pencils and phones. However, I’m thinking that for most purposes you’re going to be able to find who you’re looking for online.

But the implication of the SPSS release is that unless you use (expensive) multi-channel research techniques (provided by them?) you will be collecting bad information and misleading your clients. This isn’t true and is in fact extremely misleading.

• Read the SPSS news release
• Read Pew Report "Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users"

TopTenReviews recently published their evaluations of ten "value-priced" survey software packages (I say "value-priced because they are all below $600 for the entire system).

The systems they looked at were Survey Crafter Professional from SurveyCrafter, StatPac by StatPac, The Survey System by Creative Research Systems, FormArtist by Quask, SumQuest by SumQuest, EZSurvey by Raosoft, Survey Said by Marketing Masters, Survey Gold by Golden Hills Software, Survey Genie by William Steinberg Consultants and iMagic Survey Pro by iMagic Software.

The reviewers at TopTen selected Survey Crafter Professional as their favorite because it has "the perfect balance of creative freedom coupled with strong statistical analysis." StatPac Survey Software was rated second highest followed by The Survey System which was given third place.

Although the reviews are fairly short, if you’re looking for a fairly inexpensive system ranging from $100 to $600 these reviews are probably enough to get you started.

• TopTenReview’s Survey Software Report 2007
• Survey Crafter Pro web site
• StatPac Survey Software web site
• The Survey System web site
• Quask FormArtist web site
• SumQuest Survey Software web site
• Raosoft EZSurvey web site
• Survey Said web site
• Golden Hills Software’s SurveyGold
• William Steinberg Consultant’s Survey Genie
• iMagic Survey Software

Let’s face it: an online survey is, at its heart, simply a collection of forms. Super long forms with many pages and twisty questions yes, but still forms. And built into the very architecture of the world wide web are the tools that are needed to build forms (and ultimately, surveys). So what is the point of building a service that’s only point is to build forms? Who would use it?

Enter Wufoo.com, the Web 2.0 answer to online forms. Creating forms has really never been so easy or so much fun. Or so much fun to look at. Or so smooth. As someone else pointed out somewhere else, this service makes you wish you had a need for a form so that you could use Wufoo to build it. It really is that neat.

Can you make surveys using Wufoo? Not really. I mean, I suppose if you had a really simple survey that you wanted to execute, you probably could. It does let you do multiple choice questions, open-ended questions, and single-response questions. It even has special fields that help respondents enter prices, addresses, e-mail addresses and dates (all of the things one might regularly enter in a form). But there are also a lot of survey-related things that it doesn’t let you do, like create multiple pages, or validate responses in a meaningful way (other than to require the fields). I would hazard to say that as far as survey capabilities go, SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang have more features, as well as libraries of templates you can use to get you started. These are, after all, programs that were specifically designed to help you create surveys.

One thing that was a little annoying — I spent about five minutes designing a form and clicked the "Themes" button to make it look extra pretty — only to discover that my form had completely disappeared! I had assumed that my changes were being saved as I went and never even noticed the "Save Form" button at the bottom-right corner of the page. Make sure you push it when you are done or your simple survey will end up be simpler than you intended. And then you’ll have to start over from scratch.

With that said, I wish SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, and even the package I use, GMI Net-MR, would take a page from the Wufoo design/survey development book and create an interface that is as fun and as easy to use. I would get a lot more work done.

Wufoo offers a variety of pricing plans, ranging from free accounts (the "gratis" plan) which lets you create 3 forms with up to 10 fields each and accept up to 100 entries a month. The next plan up (the "ad hoc" plan) costs only $9 a month and allows you to have up to 10 forms with an unlimited number of fields and accept up to 500 entries. There is also the "bona fide" account (unlimited forms, 3000 responses a month), the "carpe diem" plan (15,000 responses a month) and the "ad infinitum" plan (no limits, total cost is $199 a month).

And if you are trying to create an online form to collect data, and don’t want to mess around with the basic HTML building blocks, and if you want the chance to play with the newest and greatest of what’s out there, then give Wufoo a try.

• Wufoo.com

A couple of days ago Richard Kassiasieh of Kassblog posted an interesting commentary about Markettools’ Zoomerang product in which he expressed some concern not about the functionality of the service (which he thought was pretty straightforward) but about the branding, pricing, and control one loses over data by using an outside resource.

In terms of the branding, Richard was concerned because the free version of Zoomerang ends with a message inviting respondents to use the system to create their own services, and one could argue that this would be somewhat unprofessional-looking way for a "real" company to end an exchange with a customer (although to be fair, a company that at least goes to the trouble to collect feedback from customers — even free online software — is much better than all of those companies that don’t collect any feedback at all). And to be completely fair, the paid version of Zoomerang does allow you to remove the branding.

But Richard raises a good point — if you are going to go to the trouble of collecting invaluable data from your customers, you at least owe it to yourself to use a process where you control the look and feel of the experience from beginning to end (which, I should again point out, is possible using the paid version of Zoomerang. But even there you need to make sure you change the settings appropriately and test your survey to make sure it looks exactly as you want it to look).

Richard’s second point is that services such as Zoomerang store your data on their servers. This is, of course, true for all web-based survey systems and there is no getting around it unless you only use survey software installed on your own computers that are maintained in your own facilities. You can to some degree mitigate the risk by making sure you understand the level of security and regular backup procedures of the company that you choose to use for your survey research.

Zoomerang doesn’t say precisely how your data is stored other than to indicate that information on members and panelists are stored in "secure databases" protected by passwords, and that data from surveys is stored at "a secure hosting facility with both physical and software-based security systems." For most people, this probably sounds secure enough but if you want to know more and if security really is a concern you may want to contact the provider before you start your survey.

Data retention policies are also important to consider. For example, if you use the free version of Zoomerang they say that your data will only be saved for 10 days following the start of the survey. The impression I get is that they do retain it longer than that and it can be accessed again if you sign up for a paid account, but it is always important to understand the data retention policies before you get started as well as whether or not it will be easy for you to download your data in a managable format when you are finished. Richard expressed concern that Zoomerang only allows a flat file format — well, I think for most people that is probably enough. There are a few services that will allow you to download your survey into a relational file format (such as an Access data file), but these services tend to cost more and frankly I’m not sure what most researchers would ever do with the data in that format anyways. SPSS takes only flat files.

Finally Richard raises the question of cost and why there aren’t more open-source alternatives. He speaks the truth when he notes that survey software isn’t really that hard to write and to that I really don’t have that much of an answer. I imagine it will happen eventually.

• Read Richard’s article about Zoomerang at Kassblog