About Surveys

One of the great benefits of an online survey software is that it collects and analyzes your results automatically, which takes a lot of the busy work out of your research. With Qualtrics, you can easily create graphs, tables, cross tabs, subgroups and drill downs for your results. You can also very easily download your raw data into SPSS or Excel.

Question Blocks are a simple, yet powerful tool when creating a survey. Just as the name implies, they are blocks, chunks, or groupings of questions. On the simpler side, they are a great way to organize or categorize different areas of your survey by putting questions of a similar nature or topic within the same question block. You can expand your question block when you are ready to work with it, and minimize it when you are finished.

On a more advanced note, they really become useful when you need to do advanced survey logic (it allows you to do more than what typical Skip Logic allows), as well as use loop and merge (repeat the question block according to what they selected on a previous question). The results still come through the same as if they were all in the same question block, but you were able to accomplish a lot more when creating the survey.

One of the largest challenges in running a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is collecting the data. Often companies would like every leader in the company to complete the analysis so new goals and strategies can be developed. Unfortunately, most time email isn't the best option for these as anonymity is compromised. Also paper and pencil versions cause a great time lag due to the input of data.

A much more simpler option for a SWOT analysis is to use an online survey tool. Online survey tools will provide two critical improvements from formats of the past. First, they will provide anonymity to the respondent. Many employees are apprehensive about critiquing the company's policies and processes. With an online survey, anonymity can be guaranteed, thus resulting in a larger disclosure of information from the employee.

The second problem that online surveys resolve is the tedious process of data collection and analysis. Unlike, traditional methods of survey distribution survey software automatically collects the data and provides a simple analysis. The amount of analysis depends greatly on the software, but the majority of programs will also let you export your results into either SPSS, Excel, or some other type of statistical analysis tool.

The Chi-square statistic is the primary statistic used for figuring out the significance of the cross-tabulation table. It is used to test for independence between the variables.  If the variables are independent of each other (or in other words they have no relation), then the Chi-Square test will be non-significant.  If the variables are found to be related, then the results of the statistical test will be "significant" and we can state that there is some relationship between the variables.

Survey Skip Logic is a great function to use if you want to skip survey respondents around in an online survey based on how they answer certain questions.  For example, you can skip someone from question #3 to question #20, if they choose a specific answer choice in question 3 (questions 4-19 may not apply to a respondent, if they answer a certain way in question 3).  I use skip logic often when creating surveys.

Automating processes is the new assembly line of the twenty first century.  Using computers and machines we take simple mind numbing tasks that humans dislike doing over and over again and we do them automatically with little or no human intervention.  When we automate surveys by programming them and putting them online we eliminate the need for humans to administer these surveys.  This decreases costs and increases accuracy for the data collected. 

While you will always find bias, for an online survey which is automated it is easier keep it unbiased.  This is because there is nobody actually giving the survey who could possibly allow their biases (even subconsciously) to affect the respondents.  Each survey will be presented in exactly the same way for each respondent.  The randomization of questions, answers or whole question scenarios becomes a breeze.   And the good part is that it has become very easy to make these surveys.  You no longer need to know how to do computer programming to make them.  These automated online surveys can be made online from a variety of companies (I suggest Qualtrics) in a very short time.

Hurray for modern technology!

One of the most asked questions in surveys and sampling is "what should my sample size be?"  It is definitely important and there are several factors that need to be taken into account before a sample size is determined.  These factors are:

The level of precision

The confidence level

Degree of Variability

There are several strategies in determining a sample size:

Use a Census for small populations

Use a Sample Size of a similar study

Use Published tables

Use a formula

There are actually several formulas that can be used to determine sample size.   They are all variations of the same princple formula.  A simple formula that will almost always be effective in determining a proper sample size is:

n=(N/(1+N(e)^2))

where:

n=sample size

N=Population size

 e=margin of error

A 360 evaluation is a technique used to gather information about an individual from all around them.  This is usually done through a survey.  The same survey is distributed to people with different relations to the individual.  For example, the feedback would come from subordinates, peers, and managers in the organizational hierarchy.  It is also common to obtain a self-assessment from the individual.  It is called a 360 Evaluation because the feedback comes from all-around the individual.

This is helpful because some individuals can be two-faced, and act and behave on one way to those above them, and completely different to those underneath them. With a 360 Evaluation, you can determine what different levels feel about the individual and get a better perspective of the whole picture.  Qualtrics surveys are great for doing 360-Evaluations and provide great reporting tools so you can easily understand what the feedback is saying.

Often when working online, you are in need of a spell-check feature. Let's face it, if you're like me, a spell-check feature comes in handy when you're typing faster than you're thinking. I create a lot of surveys and I've found, thankfully, there are some very simple options that are very helpful when creating survey questions. 

The latest versions of Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari browsers both provide built-in spell-check features. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, then you can install a simple add-on that will accomplish this for you (IE7Pro and ieSpell both provide a nice option for spell checking as well as instructions on how to use them).Now, any time you are entering text for a survey question, you will see the red underline when you have a questionable spelling. Hopefully you find these alternatives as helpful as I do!

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Japan and conduct several cross-cultural psychology experiments. For the majority of our experiments we used pencil and paper surveys. What a pain! We were collecting data from several colleges around the country, more specifically Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Aomori, Saporro, Kyoto, Sendai, and Osaka. Luckily we had about seven research assistants because it took forever to put all the information into a spreadsheet and then analyse it in SPSS. After putting all the information in the computer we also had to seperate different surveys from one another. It took about two months to complete. One of the other experiments, studying surnames and affluency, was completed using  an online survey tool. Although we had a lot of respondents in total our team probably only spent a couple hours having to analyze the results. It was so much easier to simply export the data into SPSS, rather than having to code, type, and then analyze. It saved us loads of time.

As the online survey software market grows, so do the features that are offered with various programs. Most have capabilities in other languages, depending on the language installed on the respondents computer. Many can even do multiple languages in the same survey. This is especially helpful when collecting data with a multilingual population. You can give the respondents the survey in the language that they would prefer. Thus, decreasing respondent comprehension errors.