University of Wyoming Instructional Computing Services

How can I or my class give an online survey?

Last Update: 1 November 2011; RKH
Last tested: 2009

Instructors often want to, or want their classes to, conduct original research through an online survey, with responses gathered from the public or a selected group of invited respondents.

UW Survey Tool

The UW Survey Tool resembles Survey Monkey (see below): An online survey is set up with forms for the questions and the settings, and then distributed through a URL, which can be added to a website or sent via e-mail to participants. Results are maintained on the survey website and can be examined there or downloaded as data files. The product vendor is ClassApps. You will find a list of the software's features on their sales pages at http://www.classapps.com/SelectSurveyFeatures.asp.

The software is licensed, offered, and maintained by Information Technology at: https://survey.uwyo.edu.

For an account that will allow you to set up and administer surveys, e-mail "webhelp@uwyo.edu," just as the entry page states. With the credentials you get in response, you will be able to login on the entry page.

For the pertinent notes from UW Information Technology, which offers workshops on the Survey Tool, see the AskIT page:
http://www.uwyo.edu/askit/displaydoc.asp?askitdocid=2641&parentid=1
The AskIT page will refer you to video tutorials, and also give you a link to the Select Survey User manual.

To help your planning, here are some notes from development and administration of a survey given by this office in May of 2009.

Title

Sakai Multi-Institutional Survey: Instructors

Dates

From 05/01/2009 to 05/10/2009

Options

Template: Angela (plain)
Resumable, anonymous
Email Respondent: No
Progress Bar
Number within survey

Invitation Message (elaboration on the boilerplate text provided):

Instructional Computing Services at UW, along with other universities, is conducting a survey to collect data on WyoSakai, the open-source course website platform, and would appreciate your response by May 10th. Submission of a completed survey will enter you into a drawing to win a $50 certificate for UW Bookstore merchandise.
Your responses to this survey are confidential and anonymous. Your e-mail address is only associated with your responses long enough for us to identify the gift certificate winners. Results from this survey will only be presented in aggregate form.
For your convenience, your work on the survey may be suspended and resumed at your convenience until the deadline (although this feature may work only on Internet Explorer). To begin, click the link given.
Robin Hill
Instructional Computing Services
The link to the survey is:
#SurveyLink#

If you do not wish to respond to this survey, please click on the link below to decline:
#DeclineLink#

Completion Message:

Thank you for participating in the Multi-Institutional Sakai survey. Gift certificate winners will be notified via email in May.
If you have additional comments about WyoSakai, please contact me at hill@uwyo.edu.

The basic WyoSakai architecture is based on the Sakai community-source Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE)...

Deployment Options

E-Mail Subject: same as title
From: Robin Hill
hill@uwyo.edu

Tips:

• Write your invitation e-mail and your completion message before you start, and save in a file for re-use if you have to start over.
• Understand the cycle of development and testing: Write (Develop) --> Deploy (Launch) to test subjects --> Close --> Revise (Develop) --> etc. --> Deploy to actual subjects --> Close --> View Results
• Page Conditions: Must be TRUE for page to be presented to responder.
• Text and images can be inserted into a page, but not into a question.
• Export results with "Date Completed" (to make sure that it's done) and "E-Mail List Address" (for gift certificate winner identification).
• The "Resumable" option is known to work only under IE on Windows.
• To save the survey questions, or results, in readable format, simply copy-and-paste the browser screens into an HTML editor or even into Microsoft Word.

Other Options

• The UW Survey Tool is well suited for simple online surveys, but it might not be appropriate for all applications. Some web surveys may require statistical sampling of respondents, developing and assessing new survey questions, or devising an optimal pattern for skipping questions. On complicated survey issues such as these, the advice of a professional survey methodologist should be sought.
  
  WYSAC, the Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center, is a UW unit that conducts scientific surveys and evaluation research on a fee-for-service basis (see http://wysac.uwyo.edu). WYSAC s customized services for web surveys include questionnaire design and pre-testing, website creation, hosting, data harvesting, statistical analysis, and report writing. WYSAC also conducts mixed-mode surveys, which combine a web survey with phone, mail, and/or in-person data collection. Cost estimates for WYSAC services can be obtained by emailing wysac@uwyo.edu.
• Another option is SurveyMonkey, which charges about $20 per month for a full-service subscription. A limited enrollment (10 questions and 100 responses per survey) is available free (see www.surveymonkey.com). SurveyMonkey is one of several commercial web survey services; others can be located through a web search. UW does not endorse SurveyMonkey over any other such service.