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…)
Grapevine Surveys announced today the release of a new version of Employee Evaluator, a 360 degree feedback web-based software package specifically designed for performing HR evaluations of all types, including employee evaluations, team assessments, performance appraisals, job reviews and multi-rater feedback.
The new version features a number of enhancements, including a start-to-finish Wizard-based system to guide and manage the entire process, a comprehensive survey approval process, and a totally revamped graphic interface. Grapevine Employee Evaluator continues to include in-depth multi-level reporting and distribution control, an extensive selection of professionally-designed survey templates, automated system distribution and collection of evaluations, custom branding and control over evaluation variables.
Grapevine is offering a free trial package to the frist 500 Corporate users who try the service. Sign up here.
Zoomerang recently announced the creation of a new "Education Resource Center" which will provide practical tips and best practices to educators interested in revitalizing their academic initiatives. The program, which is closely integrated with Zoomerang’s online survey service, is designed to give educators the tools they need to use survey research to drive curriculum decisions and increase student performance; incorporate faculty imput into the decision-making process while increasing teacher satisfaction; and eliminate cumbersome paper processing allowing educators to spend more time on classrom development.
SurveyZ is an entirely web-based, self-service internet survey system developed and operated by Utah-based Qualtrics. It offers a variety of advanced capabilities, including unique survey questions, branching, looping, piping, trigger-based responses and form grading as well as an unparalleled collection of pre-written surveys that you can borrow questions from or use as the basis for your own surveys. The design and organization of the SurveyZ survey development environment isn’t particularly impressive (it looks like something out of 1998), and the design options for the surveys themselves are fairly limited — yet the design process is fairly smooth and even the most complex surveys can be created by individuals with very little experience. SurveyZ has a built in e-mail invitation system and a very limited reporting engine. All in all, if you’re looking for a survey system that can do just about anything and you don’t care so much about design or reporting, SurveyZ may have everything you need.
Opinio 5 is a well-designed, easy to use and highly customizable internet survey system published by Oslo, Norway based ObjectPlanet. The software, which is available both as a hosted service and as an application you can install on your own web server, offers all of the major features you would expect to find in a moderately advanced packaged with a few very powerful and interesting extras (and a couple of notable deficits). It is perfect for a corporate research department or organization with users at several levels — novice will find it fairly easy to create smart looking surveys very quickly, while more advanced users will be able to control precisely how the surveys look and feel. Opinio also offers a highly configurable reporting engine that for some applications may completely replace the need to examine the results in an outside data analysis package. The software is well priced, extensible, and is definitely worthy of consideration for any midsized research department looking for a flexible, easy to manage internet survey package.
ResearchExec, owned and operated by the Fairfield, Connecticut based company of the same name, is an entirely web-based survey system that is available either as a hosted solution or as a package you can install on your own server. It offers a tremendous amount of customizability as well as a number of advanced features such as the ability to set quotas for individual questions and advanced survey logic. It has integrated panel management that allows you to send surveys to specific members based on their responses to previous surveys. The survey development system, while elegantly designed and extremely flexible, is tedious to use and does not play well with FireFox 1.5 or Internet Explorer 7 RC1. It offers very little in terms of a reporting system, and you should expect to do most of your analysis in a separate program such as Excel or SPSS. Because of the focus on advanced features, the sharper learning curve and the lack of a reporting engine, ResearchExec is more likely to appeal to users at a professional research firm and not those looking for a quick easy way to produce and report on internet research.
Beeliner Surveys is a simple, easy-to-use and extremely inexpensive online survey service operated by Cambridge, Massachusetts based @Spinfish Web/ROG. Although its survey capabilities and design flexibility are very limited, the system is very easy to use and it includes some very unique and useful features, such as the ability to include full surveys within e-mail messages and create custom reports that can be saved and reused. While the program does have some security issues and while it does very much limit your options in terms of the types of questions you can ask, organizations looking to conduct a quick and easy survey may find the program does what they need at a price they can afford.
U.K. based ITWeek IWR Labs recommends six internet survey packages including 2ask, Demographix, QuestionBuilder, SurveyMonkey, Sysurvey, and WebSurveyor.
2Ask: ITWeek liked the ease of survey creation and the packages to suit every budget; they didn’t like the limited support options and the fact that pacakges were differentiated by the number of questions you could ask and the number of responses you could collect.
Demographix: They liked the fixed cost, user-friendly, powerful analysis tools and the impressive free trial. They didn’t like the high price of the software.
QuestionBuilder: ITWeek liked the easy of survey creation, the variety of templates, powerful analysis, and the great value. They didn’t like the fact that phone support was on U.S. time.
SurveyMonkey: ITWeek liked the inexpensive starting costs for unlimited surveys and the free basic service. They didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t a full-featured evaluation and that the number of responses you could collect was capped.
SySurvey: They liked the low cost per response, the data sharing and the CATI support. They thought survey creation could be easier, and didn’t like that there was no phone support.
WebSurveyor: ITWeek liked the "superb" template range and the powerful analysis and reporting tools. They didn’t like the fact that support was offered on U.S. time.
In the July, 2006 issue of the Market Research Society’s Research Magazine, Tim Macer reviewed Perseus SurveySolutions 2.0, a multi-user online survey solution with integrated sampling, invitation management, report preparation and publishing, which is aimed at large enterprises wishing to consolidate and co-ordinate all their research and feedback activities.
Tim liked the Word-like interface for designing surveys, the centrally controlled ‘profiles’ that allow direct links to enterprise databases to provide "real-time and moment-of-truth sampling" and the simple results portal; he didn’t like the fact that there was no intelligent support for coding or consolidating open-ended data, the limited range of statistics, and the fact that it was labourious working with open-ends.
Read Tim Macer’s full review of Perseus Survey Solutions EFM 2.0
In the June, 2006 issue of issue of the Market Research Society’s Research Magazine, Tim Macer reviewed Monitor Group’s MarketSight, a web based survey analytic tool for researchers and end-users, with an emphasis on interactive hypothesis testing.
Tim liked the expert-system approach which automatically applies appropriate statistical tests, the highly intuitive interface which makes analysis quick and easy, and the simple import and setup from SPSS or SAS formats. He didn’t like the fact that it doesn’t support multiple response questions, that it works only in IE6, and that there is no local support in Europe.
Read Tim Macer’s full review of Monitor Group’s MarketSight.
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