Research

• Overview
• Advice/Guidance
• Case Study

One of the primary objectives when building a web based survey is clarity. Questions should be simply put and presented in an uncluttered way so that the resulting data are unambiguous and so that respondents do not have to spend more time than necessary completing it.

In this screenshot the respondent is asked to allocate time to the various work activities that may be performed during a day expressed as a percentage of the working day. The system keeps a running total and validates that it adds up to 100% and will not allow the respondent to move on to the next page unless it does.

Our questionnaire engine is designed so that surveys can be mounted in more than one language simultaneously. In this case, the requirement was for English and Portuguese, the respondent selecting his or her preferred language at the start of the survey.

Regardless of the language selected, the answers are securely stored in the same database and reports and conclusions can be generated based on a number of criteria such as language, location, etc. (depending upon the profile data that is collected) or alternatively may be based upon all the data.

Different types of questions may be mounted; multi-choice, rating (as seen in this screen shot), profile information (e.g. How old are you?, Are you male or female?, etc.), informational (e.g. How much time do you spend...?) and free text (useful for questions such as: Are there any other comments you would like to make?). A survey may consist of all of one type (multi-choice or rating normally) or a combination of any or all types.

The respondent is being asked here to rate office facilities and in this case the rating options include ‘not applicable’ as not all questions apply to all respondents. In the case where the ‘not applicable’ (or similar wording) option is selected, the score is ignored in the reporting so that results are not skewed.