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.

Sliding scale question types are useful if you want to keep your respondent excited about your survey.  Instead of throwing a bunch of multiple choice questions at the respondent, switch it up a little.  An example of a good question to use on a sliding scale would be "how happy are you with your Professor?"  Qualtrics provides different sliding scale icons (smiley face, letter grade, etc.) — the respondent can then slide a tab up or down a scale to make the smiley face smile or frown, based on how happy they with their Professor.

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.