SurveyGold
Survey Everywhere
  • Home
  • Get Started
  • Solutions
    • Who Uses SurveyGold
    • Survey Tools >
      • Email Surveys
      • In-Person Surveys
      • Kiosk Surveys
      • Mobile Surveys
      • Online Surveys
      • Paper Surveys
    • Survey Assistance
    • Students
    • Individuals
    • Business
    • Non-Profit/Government
    • Teachers/Students
  • Products
    • SurveyGold Application >
      • Email Surveys
      • In-Person Surveys
      • Kiosk Surveys
      • Mobile Surveys
      • Online Surveys
      • Paper Surveys
      • Key Benefits and Features
      • FAQs
      • Customers
      • Reviews
    • SurveyGold Online Services >
      • FAQs
    • SurveyGold Mobile >
      • Mobile Surveys
      • Get It Now
      • FAQs
    • Product Road Map
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Plans
    • How To Purchase
    • Discounts
    • FAQs
  • Support
    • Contact Us
    • Knowledge Base
    • Online Services Status
    • Remote Support
    • Solution Updates
    • Suggestions
    • Tutorials
    • User Guide
    • Search
  • Blog

Ten Things That Influence Employee Survey Response Rates

9/11/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Employers concerned about the response rates associated with your employee surveys should take note of this helpful article from On-The-Same-Page that defines ten variables that can affect employee response and survey validity.
Read the Article
0 Comments

How To Add an Image or Hyperlink to an Online Survey Question

12/5/2014

0 Comments

 
SurveyGold provides the ability to display an image alongside a response choice. Setting this up is easily done within the SurveyGold application.

However, if you require that an image or hyperlink be included in the actual question text (as opposed to being displayed alongside a response choice), you can do this by adding a little bit of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to your question text or instruction text. Using HTML you can easily put an image or a link or any other HTML effects in the question text of an online survey form. 

Space Shuttle Survey Example

For an example of how this is done, take a look at the first question in our fictitious Space Shuttle Survey. Notice that the question text contains an image of the Space Shuttle. It also contains a hyperlink to reference information regarding the Space Shuttle.

This was accomplished by entering question text via the Setup Survey tab in the SurveyGold application that included some HTML as follows:

Does this look like the Space Shuttle?<br /><br /><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_launching.jpg/220px-Space_Shuttle_Columbia_launching.jpg"><br /><br/>Please answer the question based on what you see. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle" target="_blank">Here is reference information about the Space Shuttle.</a>
View the Space Shuttle Survey
Picture
If you are unfamiliar with HTML, this can look daunting. So, let's unpack this. It's actually very straightforward.

How to Add an Image

Use an image tag <img src="URL_FOR_IMAGE_GOES_HERE"> in the question text to include the image. Refer to W3Schools for more information on the img tag.

For our example survey, we used Google to locate a URL for a public domain image of the Space Shuttle. The URL is http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_launching.jpg/220px-Space_Shuttle_Columbia_launching.jpg.  We us

Use a couple of line break tags <br /><br /> in the question text before the image and after the image to set it apart visually. Refer to W3Schools for more information the br tag. 

How to Add a Hyperlink

Use an anchor tag <a href="URL_FOR_CONTENT_GOES_HERE" target="_blank">TEXT GOES HERE</a> in the question text to include the link to the desired content.  The Refer to W3Schools for more information on the a tag.

For our example survey, we used Google to locate a URL for a Wikipedia article to serve as reference data.  The URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle. and was placed in the location URL_FOR_CONTENT_GOES_HERE.  The text Here is reference information about the Space Shuttle. was placed where TEXT GOES HERE so that it appears properly in the question text as a hyperlink.

How to Eliminate HTML from Question Text When Viewing Results

If you use HTML in your question text, there is one other consideration that pertains to viewing survey results. SurveyGold normally uses the question text when displaying survey results in the View Results and Analyze Results tabs. When HTML is included in the question text, this will produce very unsightly question text when displaying survey results. 

To resolve this, enter the question text that you want to see when displaying survey results in the Chart Title tab in the question properties sheet. When SurveyGold detects a chart title, it displays that as the question text when producing reports and viewing results. This results in reports and charts don't have all the HTML debris contained in them when displaying the question text.

For our example, we specified the following Chart Title: Does this look like the Space Shuttle?

0 Comments

How To Enter Survey Responses That Occurred in the Past

9/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Normally, when survey responses are recorded in the Conduct Survey tab of the SurveyGold application, the current "date of entry" is recorded in the response record. However, SurveyGold also provides the optional ability to specify a specific date (e.g., a date in the past) for which the response occurred. This feature (enabled via the "Confirm response date upon Conclude Survey" SurveyGold preference setting) provides the ability to accurately record time-sensitive responses long after the survey was conducted while reflecting the date and time the past that the response actually occurred.

Furthermore, SurveyGold provides the ability to view a subset of all respondents to a given survey based upon any response to any question or a response date range or both. This "filter" feature allows you the ability to view respondents from a particular time period. It is then possible to create graphs and reports based upon the respondents in the filtered set of respondents.
0 Comments

The Consequences of Poorly-Designed Surveys

6/10/2014

0 Comments

 
"Poorly-designed survey instruments will yield less-than-reliable data. There. I said it. DIY platforms are springing up all over, allowing any Tom, Dick or Harry to throw a survey to the ether to collect data to inform their business decisions. What a thrill it is to collect this data for pennies per respondent! However, unless your questionnaire is designed well (which I’ll explain in a moment), the data you collect could be next to useless. Or worse, it could be just plain wrong."
This interesting Quirk's article by Darrin Helsel of Vivisum Partners shows how to make sure your surveys are asking the right questions in the right ways.
Read the Article

0 Comments

An Alternative to Boring Surveys: Try Writing Humanized Surveys

2/12/2014

1 Comment

 
"Myself included, most professional survey writers have gotten stuck in a rut. In our quest to be as accurate and precise as possible, we have chosen to write surveys that are so clear and specific that they are also ultra-boring and difficult to read." - Annie Pettit, Peanut Labs
Annie Pettit is chief research officer at San Francisco research firm Peanut Labs. She writes a compelling article on the topic of authoring surveys in this month's Quirk's Marketing Research Review Newsletter. I highly recommend it.
Read the Article

1 Comment

How To Solve The Biggest Survey Administration Problems

1/20/2014

0 Comments

 
We get a lot of inquiries from our customers about how to solve problems they encounter when conducting surveys. Here are a few of the more gnarly ones and how SurveyGold easily solves them.

Modifying an Online Survey That Is Currently Being Conducted

You have deployed a web survey and you've discovered a change (e.g., correcting a typographical error, correcting a response choice omission) that needs to be made. How do you go about modifying an active survey without making a mess of your existing response data?

Learn how to solve this problem in this three-minute video tutorial.

Conducting the Same Survey via the Web, Paper, In-Person

You need to connect with survey respondents in three different ways: online via the web as well as offline via paper and in-person interviews. You need to collect the responses into a single, unified place for reporting and analysis. How do you do this without having to create the same survey using three different tools?

Learn how to create a new survey once that can then be conducted in any way you like.

Learn how to create a web survey form of your new survey.

Learn how to create a paper survey form of your new survey.

Learn how to equip your colleagues to conduct surveys offline on your behalf.

Learn how to allow anyone to electronically transcribe your completed paper questionnaires.

Viewing a Subset of Respondents Based Upon Response Criteria

You need to view and report your survey results using a subset of respondents who answered certain questions in a particular way or based upon the date they responded or a combination thereof. How do you do this without having to create multiple surveys for each time period?

Learn how to solve this problem in this four-minute video tutorial.

0 Comments

Tip: How To Save a Report to a PDF File

12/18/2013

0 Comments

 
You can print any report in the Analyze Results tab using a PDF printer driver. This describes how to do it.

Step 1: Install a PDF Printer Driver

Install and install a free PDF printer driver to your computer. A PDF printer driver provides the ability to create a PDF file from any program that is able to print.

We recommend using PDFCreator if you do not already have a PDF printer driver because it is free, safe to use and actively supported by its provider. 
  • Download and install the free PDFCreator PDF print driver. This one-time installation process only takes a moment to accomplish.

Step 2: Print Your Report Using the PDF Printer Driver

After installing the PDFCreator PDF printer driver, you can use it to create PDF files from most of SurveyGold reports available in the Analyze Results tab.

Here is an example of how to print the List Results report:
  1. Launch SurveyGold, select the Analyze Results tab, select your survey and perform the List Results action. This produces a report that is view-able via the SurveyGold application.
  2. Select Print Setup from the button bar.
  3. Select the PDF printer driver (PDFCreator) from the list of printers and select OK. This is instructs Windows to use the PDF printer driver when printing from the SurveyGold application.
  4. Select Print from the button bar. Follow the instructions for naming and saving your PDF file.

0 Comments

Tip: How to Close an Online Survey Form

2/7/2013

0 Comments

 
If you have an online survey that is currently in circulation and you want to stop it from collecting responses, you can close your online survey via one of the following means.

Remove Your Online Survey from Distribution

This makes it impossible for respondents to access your online survey form. If you distributed your online survey form via your own website, use your own resources to remove it. If you distributed your online survey form via SurveyGold Online Services, you can do this via the Setup Survey tab in SurveyGold application as follows:
  • Right-click on your survey
  • Select the popup menu option "Remove Web Form from SurveyGold Online Services"

Performing this action removes the online survey form from distribution. This does not remove any online survey responses from SurveyGold Online Services.

Set a Cutoff Date and Time for Your Online Survey

If you distributed your online survey form via the SurveyGold website, you can specify a date and time (using the respondent's timezone) when you want your online survey form to stop accepting responses. This is done via the Restrictions tab when saving your survey as a online survey form to the SurveyGold website.
Learn How

Set a Maximum Respondent Count for Your Online Survey

If you distributed your online survey form via the SurveyGold website, you can specify a number of respondents (quota) at which point you want the online survey form to stop accepting responses. This is done via the Restrictions tab when saving your survey as a online survey form to the SurveyGold website.
Learn How

0 Comments

Tip: How to Transfer Ownership of an Online Survey

12/19/2012

0 Comments

 
You've created an online survey using your SurveyGold application and for the longest time you have been the one responsible for collecting responses, performing analysis and reporting on results. The day has come when your job responsibilities have changed and you need to pass along responsibility of collecting responses of this online survey to another SurveyGold user in your organization so that they can take over your survey management responsibilities. 

If this describes your situation, the following guidance describes how to accomplish this. For the sake of this discussion, there are two people involved in this process and there are step-by-step instructions to follow for each person:
  • Original Survey Owner
    You, the person who currently has the survey in your SurveyGold application and wants to permanently transfer ownership to another person while retaining your SurveyGold application
  • New Survey Owner
    The other person who wants to get your survey and responses permanently transferred to their SurveyGold application and who wants to collect online survey responses for this survey into their SurveyGold application from now on

What the original survey owner Must Do:

1) Remove your existing online survey from circulation

This prevents anyone else from being able to respond to the online survey while you are in the process of transferring the survey.

If the online survey is currently published on the SurveyGold website (because you used your SurveyGold application to publish your online survey):
  1. Launch your SurveyGold application, if it is not open
  2. Select the Setup Survey tab
  3. Right-click on the survey and select Remove Web Form from SurveyGold Website from the popup menu

In contrast, if the online survey is on your organization's website, remove the online survey from your website (or work with a webmaster to do so).

2) Collect the remaining online survey responses for your survey into your SurveyGold application

This ensures that you have collected all responses for your online survey form prior to transferring ownership of the survey.
  1. Select the Dashboard tab
  2. Perform the Update Activity action

3) Export your survey and responses from your SurveyGold application into a survey definition file

This makes it possible to transfer your survey and response data to another SurveyGold user.
  1. Select the Setup Survey tab
  2. Right-click on the survey and select Lock from the popup menu (do not specify a password)
  3. Right-click on the survey again and select Export from the popup menu
  4. Save the survey definition file to a folder accessible by the new survey owner (e.g., network folder, DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, USB flash drive)

4) Remove your survey from your SurveyGold application

This permanently removes the survey and responses from your SurveyGold.
  1. Select the Setup Survey tab
  2. Right-click on your survey and select Delete from the popup menu

What the New Survey Owner Must Do:

1) Import the survey definition file into your SurveyGold application

This causes the survey and responses to be imported into your SurveyGold application.
  1. Launch your SurveyGold application, if it is not open
  2. Select the Setup Survey tab
  3. Select the folder that you want to contain your survey (normally this is My Surveys)
  4. Select Import from the Folder group in the button bar
  5. Select the network shared folder where the Original Survey Owner moved the survey definition file in step 3 above
  6. Select the survey from the list of surveys
  7. Select the Import Responses option and select OK

2) Distribute the survey as an online survey form via your SurveyGold application

This causes a new online survey to be created by and distributed by your SurveyGold application. Doing this ensures that any new responses submitted via the online survey form are collected into your SurveyGold application.
  1. Select the Setup Survey tab
  2. Select the newly imported survey
  3. Select Save as Web Form from Survey group in the button bar
  4. Complete the specific steps to create the online survey form and distribute to your liking (most people publish the online survey form to the SurveyGold website)
Tip:  If your online survey form is accessed by a web link (URL) on an existing website that you manage, you should update the web link on your website (or work with a webmaster to do so) so that respondents are directed to the newly created online survey form. This is because the web link (URL) for the online survey form produced by your SurveyGold application is different than the original web link (URL) created by the original survey owner's SurveyGold application.

0 Comments

Three Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Survey Results

12/5/2012

0 Comments

 
Here are a few tips for working with the survey results collected in your SurveyGold application.

For a Long-Running Survey Use a Date Range Filter Rather than Creating a New Survey

One of the most common inquiries I receive pertains to how to manage long-running surveys. Specifically, many SurveyGold users are conducted assessments surveys over time so that can measure, for example, last year's results with this year's results.

The solution that many SurveyGold users employ is to use the Copy Survey command in the Setup Survey tab to create a copy of last year's survey and just change the name slightly so that it becomes  this year's survey. However, my recommendation is that you do not create a new survey, but continue to collect responses using the existing survey. Then you can use the date range filter feature in the View Results tab to view only the respondents from a particular time period such as last year. The benefit of this is that you can easily create a filter for last year and another filter for this year and then compare the two sets of respondents as multiple series in a single graph. This is not possible if you create two separate surveys and is only possible by using the date range filter from the entire set of long-running survey results.

Check out our SurveyGold Tutorial channel for a brief show-and-tell video explaining how the filter feature works.
View the Tutorial on our YouTube Channel
If you are unable to access YouTube, the tutorial is also available on our website.
View the Tutorial on our Website

Use a Chart Title to Eliminate Verbose Question Text in a Graph or Report

It is often necessary to write a lengthy question in order to convey the intent of the question to the respondent. Later after the results have been collected and you begin to view results in graphs and/or reports, the lengthy question text results in visual clutter in those graphs and reports.

The solution to this problem is not go back and change the question text from verbose to succinct. Rather, in this case I recommend that you use the chart title feature of SurveyGold that provides the ability for you to specify a more succinct chart title without changing the question text itself.

You can change the chart title associated with a question in one of two ways:
  • In Setup Survey, via the Chart Title tab in the question properties sheet
  • In View Results, by right-clicking while viewing a particular question and selecting Change Chart Title from the popup menu

Keep Question Response Choices as Terse as Possible

Keep in mind that any SurveyGold survey question that has choices (in other words, it is not a fill-in-the-blank question) appears as a graph in the View Results and Analyze Results graphs and reports. So, it helps to keep question response choices as terse as possible so as to avoid crowded or truncated graph labels and legends.

Even if you have a situation where you cannot avoid creating lengthy question response choices, it is possible for you to influence the way that the choices appear in a graph:
  1. From the SurveyGold application main menu select the View Results tab.
  2. Select your survey from the list.
  3. Select a question that you know has lengthy question response choices and select View Results.
  4. When the pie graph appears, right-click and select Change Legend Font Size.
  5. When the dialog appears, change the legend font size from "Auto" to "8" and select OK.
  6. When the pie graph appears, right-click and select Change Label Font Size.
  7. When the dialog appears, change the legend font size from "Auto" to "8" and select OK.

This makes the legend and label fonts as small as possible which makes the text that appears in the graph which makes the legends and text as small as possible thereby avoiding truncation of the response text or legend text in the graph.
0 Comments
<<Previous

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Chuck Boudreau

    As the author of SurveyGold, it's my pleasure to serve and collaborate with the diverse community of SurveyGold survey authors, surveyors and respondents.


    Would you recommend us?

    What should we add next?


    Archives

    September 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Categories

    All
    360 Degree Assessments
    Alert
    Analyze Results
    Apple
    Assessment Tools
    Author Assitance
    Authoring Surveys
    Autism
    Award
    Backup Data
    Banner Tabulations
    Bcba
    Behavior Intervention Plan
    BEING At Full Potential
    Best Practices
    Bip
    BR&E
    Bug Fix
    Business Retention & Expansion
    Buyer Criteria
    Career Solutions Group
    Charts
    Coding
    Coding Techniques
    Conduct Survey
    Consulting Services
    Dashboard
    Data Backup
    Data Encryption
    Data Entry
    Data Ownership
    Data Privacy
    Data Recovery
    DDOS
    Demographic Reports
    Design Philosophy
    Due Diligence
    Email Surveys
    Employee Surveys
    End Of Life Announcement
    End-of-life Announcement
    End Of Support Announcement
    End-of-support Announcement
    Excel
    Exit Strategy
    Feature Comparison
    Field Surveyor Network
    Field Surveys
    Filter
    Free Survey Software
    Graphs
    Heartbleed
    Hidden Disabilities
    Hyperlink
    Image
    Improving Response Rates
    In Person Surveys
    In-person Surveys
    Inside-out Thinking
    Interview Surveys
    IOS
    IPad
    Label
    Likert Scale
    Long-running Survey
    MailChimp
    Manufacturing Shop Floor Surveys
    Market Data
    Matrix Of Questions
    Microsoft Word
    Mobile Surveys
    Multiple Survey Form Factors
    Online Service Status
    Online Survey
    Open-ended Questions
    Operating System
    Organizational Assessment
    Organizational Assessment Tools
    Outside-in Thinking
    Paper Survey
    PCI
    PCI Compliance
    Peanut Labs
    Personal Engagement
    Pitfalls
    Pragmatic Marketing
    Pre-populating Responses
    Price Comparison
    Privacy
    Product Road Map
    Psychiatry
    Qualitative Analysis
    Qualitative Coding
    Qualitative Research
    Quantitative Research
    Questionnaire Analysis
    Quirks
    Reinstalling Surveygold
    Reponse Value
    Reports
    Research
    Respondent Cooperation
    Respondent Satisfaction
    Response Score
    Restore Data
    Review
    Review Sites
    Sacred Trust
    Safeguards
    Security
    Server Maintenance
    Service Status
    Setup Survey
    Software Update
    Spell Check
    Spss
    Statistical Analysis
    Subscription Billing
    Success Story
    Survey Assistance Service
    Survey Consulting Services
    Survey Design
    Survey Distribution
    Surveygold
    Surveygold Behavior Analysis Edition
    Survey Methods
    SurveyMonkey
    Survey Ownership
    Survey Pulse
    Survey Reporting
    Survey Response Sharing
    System Architecture
    Tagging
    Team Sport
    The Ohio State University
    Tips
    TLS
    Toptenreviews
    Tourettes
    Transfer
    Transfer Survey
    Transfer Survey Ownership
    Universities
    Uptime
    Url
    User Guide
    View Results
    Website
    Windows 10
    Windows 7
    Windows 8
    Windows 8.1
    Windows Vista
    Windows XP

© 1998-2023 Golden Hills Software  |  Privacy  |  Contact  |  Search

Security Seals