How to create and use online surveys?

Due to limited staff resources, Technical Services and the Web Team in the Faculty of Education do not provide in-house facilities for creation and analysis of online surveys. Instead, we recommend a third-party tool called SurveyMonkey.com, for the use of which we are happy to provide some limited guidance.

SurveyMonkey.com

Please see the SurveyMonkey.com website for information about the features, pricing, testimonials, guided tutorials and online Help Center.

SurveyMonkey.com account

In order to use SurveyMonkey.com you would need to purchase an account with them - see their Pricing web page. You will need to nominate your own login (i.e. email address) and password, and keep them safe until your SurveyMonkey account expires.

The Faculty has an account with SurveyMonkey, paid for by the Tech Services. However, this account is reserved for faculty-related surveys and surveys that don't have funding. Research surveys that require anonymity and privacy of information cannot use this account, as other people might be able to view them and even modify them.

How can a research student pay for his/her SurveyMonkey account?
Research students can apply to the Faculty Research Committee for funding to pay for their surveys.

Before creating an online survey

Write the questions for your research (eg, as a Word document)
Apply for ethics approval (if required - it is normally required).

Creating an online survey

Use the Create Survey link in the top navigation to start a new survey.

Things to consider:

How many web pages should your survey be broken up into?
Should your survey be password-protected?
- Set a password under Enable Password Protection ( in the Collect responses tab, under Change Restrictions on the left)
What should the welcome screen say if the survey is open?
- Eg, survey title, who to contact...
- Please note that the welcome screen is generated automatically if you set a password for your survey.
What should the welcome screen say if the survey is closed? Some people might go to the survey after it has been closed. It is still useful to display the title of the survey at the very least.
- Customise closed message under Set a cutoff date and time (in the Collect responses tab, under Change Restrictions on the left).
Do you need to display a logo or customise the look of the pages?
- Go to Design survey tab, then Survey Options on the left, then Add logo to Survey
  - Here you can also set the Progress Bar Settings and other survey-wide options
Are there any required/compulsory questions (i.e. the participant cannot continue with the survey unless they answer those questions)?
- Tick Answer Required checkbox for each required question.
Do you need participants to proceed to a different question/set of questions based on their previous answer? (Eg, Do you require accommodation? If yes, display the page with further accommodation-related questions. If no, users skip the accommodation-related questions.)
- Here you'd need to consider the order of your questions more carefully.
- Click on Add Logic button in the design view.
Where should the participants be re-directed to when they click on Exit the survey link or complete the survey?
- See Completion Options section of Options .
Would you like to create a list of participants in SurveyMonkey? This would enable you to email customised invitations through SurveyMonkey and track the identities of your respondents.
- Please note that the SurveyMonkey email feature doesn't allow to attach further files to the email.
- Use List Management button in the top navigation to set up participants lists.

A test run !

We strongly recommend that you do a test run of your survey, download the results and attempt to analyse them. It is at this stage you might realise that your survey has some problems or inadequacies.

The process of testing the survey in advance is very important as the most difficult part of a survey can be recruiting participants and if you don't get it right the first time this will affect your response rate.

Downloading and analysing the results

View Exporting Results (with audio) guided tutorial and visit the online Help Center.

Click on to close the survey
Click on to analyse the results. From here you can Export... your results in one of the formats provided. SurveyMonkey provides comma separated values (csv) files that can be imported into MS Excel or SPSS and relational database files (for more complex analysis).
Make a copy for archiving in accordance with any regulations that apply to your research.