Your Ultimate Survey Resource
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.
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!
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.
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.
Online surveys are no doubt the best way to do surveys. I was doing a survey for a project in my marketing class. I proof read it and then I had some of my team mates proof read it. It all looked good when we sent it out to our panel, but the next day I got an email from one of our respondents who Notified me that there were a couple of spelling errors (really embarrassing ones) in our survey. Now in a paper survey there would have been no hope. Reprinting and redistributing 50 or so surveys that had not yet been taken wouldn’t have been possible. But because it was an online survey we were able to correct the errors in a less than a minute, and no one who hadn’t already seen the survey ever knew the difference.
Later that same year in my Economics class we were doing another survey to determine a demand curve. About mid survey I was looking at the data, as it was being collected in real time, (which by its self is reason enough to use online surveys), when I noticed that one of our questions was not the correct question type to get us the data we needed. The question was collecting what peoples preferences where but respondents were not ranking their preferences as we needed. No problem I simply changed the question mid stream and we moved onward with survey, this time getting the data that we needed.
This is the big benefit of online surveys. You can see the results in real time and you can fix any errors in real time. Online surveys are just so much more flexible and resilient than are paper surveys.
Multivariate data analysis is the analysis of multiple variables at the same time. This type of analysis is used to find how a set of variables explain one or more other variables. For example, sets of variables may explain one overall variable (brand loyalty) or may differentiate between key market segments. Similarly, a set of brand attributes may be used to map relationships to the key brands competing in the marketplace, thereby showing the strengths and weaknesses of each brand.
Some typical applications of multivariate data analysis are:
With W-2's, 1099-T's, and 1040s we come to truly appreciate our beloved tax bureaucracy, the IRS. Tis the season for paying taxes. With the passage of April 15th, I once again am grateful for little tools that help me prepare, the barely legible tax forms. I personally use H&R Block for my taxes, but my brother uses Turbotax, both cost about the same. Yet, this tax season I was truly inspired by an accounting companies ingenuity. They used Qualtrics, to import the tax forms and sent the forms to their employees. Brilliance!
I actually was able to help them import one of their forms regarding research and development, it was about 10 pages long and only took me about an hour to import streamlining the whole process. I imagine that the hour I spent uploading this form saved their accountants a lot of time. Corporate taxes are much more complex than personal taxes, hence the need for a good CFO, but I was amazed at how Qualtrics was able to integrate and organize their data. I've been thinking about this myself and I might just steal this idea for my personal taxes next year.
I have recently made and distributed a series of surveys for my marketing classes and Economics classes in the Marriott School of Management. The school has a license agreement with Qualtrics which allows students and faculty to use Qualtrics’ on line survey software to build and distribute surveys. This survey tool is largely unknown, by both students and professionals in the field. I don’t expect this to continue for long.
The Qualtrics survey software is one of the most useful business tools I have seen, I would put it right close up there with Excel and Word. The array of question types was dazzling. They had the most commonly used question types twelve or so neatly organized and easy to find. They where so easy to add into the survey and to add question and answer text was a breeze. It literally took me just a minute to put in several questions. If fact the vast majority of my time was spent planning what exactly I needed to ask in order to get the data needed. Once I knew what I needed to ask, building the survey took almost no time in comparison.
But the time saving didn’t stop there. I could view the results in real time as they came in. The basic statistics where already calculated for me and reported in tables for each question. I discovered I could put in and take out the different calculations in these tables. I could also add different graph types to more visually show the results. I found that I could also drill down by the answers to certain questions, showing how those of ethnic Mexican decent responded in one way to survey while other ethnicities had different responses. I was then able to make my report public, which generated a link I sent to my group so they could go over the results before we met to discuss it. If we had wanted we could have talked over the phone while each of us looked at the results on our computers. I also found I could down load these reports into word, power point, or excel.
I have played with the system a bit and you can even down load the raw data in to excel or to SPSS to do the more serious statistical analysis. There are all sorts of other features, quotas, Skip logic, Conjoint analysis, etc. . . .
On top of all this the surveys I sent out were very sexy. It looked great! I had class mates emailing me asking how we were able to make such incredible surveys. I’m sure they thought that we had a team member who was minoring in computer science.
To my understanding Qualtrics now provides their online survey software to many universities across the U.S. and even internationally. USC, Columbia, Duke, Texas University, Texas A&M, Yale, Stanford UCLA, Bristol, University of Michigan, North Western University, Wharton College of Business, and on the business side Mercer, Royal Caribbean, Daimon, Toyota, HP, and Even Microsoft use Qualtrics online survey software.
The easy, power, and usefulness of this online survey tool dwarf any of their competitors.
By Stuart Orgill
Many companies decide to begin online survey software initiatives to make better business decisions in a variety of areas. Implementing online survey software can:
Once the survey process is brought in-house there are many other benefits that soon surface.
When a company begins an internal survey process, one of the first steps is to establish the frequency at which the team or individual will send out surveys. A natural pattern for survey distribution eliminates the long, punishing surveys that were previously sent to clients a few times per year.
In their place one can institute shorter, more efficient surveys with "bite size" data sets that are more actionable. With regular surveys there is the comfort of knowing that "you can always survey again next month" and obtain more actionable information. This drives down the data response time, and the company becomes more nimble.
Respondents to the surveys will also benefit. Stephen Covey has mentioned before that being listened to is like breathing emotionally. When clients are able to share their insights with the company they feel like they are being "heard."
Studies have shown that even those internal or external clients who don't respond to the survey benefit emotionally by knowing that the company is listening.
