Survey software

October 5, 2005 6:40 PM

I need survey software which can do both open-ended questions as well as ratings.

I need to be able to ask people what their goals are, and then get them to rate those goals, so both open-ended, asking them to write, as well as ratings. All the software I can find is either sketchy, or doesn't have open-ended questions. I would prefer software that's cheap, but I might be able to get my advisor to pay for something.

posted by stoneegg21 to computers & internet (9 answers total)

SurveyMonkey.com provides surveys that allows both open-ended and ranking questions. The service is free, provided you need less than 10 questions and 100 responses per month. The professional subscription is $19.95 per month, but you can 'downgrade' to the free one once you've collected your data (and they will still save your pro data).

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with SurveyMonkey, but have used their services in the past.
posted by istewart at 6:58 PM on October 5, 2005

I second Surveymonkey.com. We use them all the time where I work, and I've been able to let non-technical users build the surveys themselves. It's great and very inexpensive.
posted by airgirl at 7:08 PM on October 5, 2005

if you want to set it up on your own server (using php/mysql), give UCCASS a shot.
posted by masymas at 9:52 PM on October 5, 2005

Maybe a little more than you're asking for (you did need to do some conjoint analysis, right?), but for online surveys, we always use Sawtooth Software.
posted by panoptican at 11:12 PM on October 5, 2005

I really like Pentri Clipboard. Free, requires PHP. Really easy to install and set up.
posted by blag at 4:14 AM on October 6, 2005

We use Zoomerang in our office.
posted by jbradley at 8:21 AM on October 6, 2005

I may be in the minority, but it's worth considering:

If I received a link asking me to go to "Survey Monkey" or "Zoomerang", I would imediately mark it as spam.


You're much better off hosting your own, especially if looks and appearance are at all important to you. Those sites were designed with Netscape 4.7 and IE 5 as their target browsers.
posted by o0o0o at 8:59 AM on October 6, 2005

I used to work for Perseus Development. They are the brand-leader in online survey research. Their product offerings have changed around a bit so I had to ask a former co-worker for guidance :-) SurveySolutions Pro what's left of the desktop survey app I used to support. "What's left of" makes it sound bad; it's actually quite good. We just used to have a bunch of related products that are no longer offered. Pro is probably out of your price range unless you plan to do pretty complex stuff.

SurveySolutions Express is a free web-based app that can probably do most, if not all, the stuff you need. I've never used it, but it's part of their new flagship product so I'm sure it's great.
posted by autojack at 1:18 PM on October 6, 2005

(Late to this party -- reading the thread while looking for other people's opinions on survey software.)

All FWIW/YMMV. I have an opinion on Zoomerang v. SurveyMonkey, but no experience or opinion yet on self-hosted solutions.

SurveyMonkey is cheap. When you reckon the opportunity costs associated with self-hosting, it might be the way to go. But be advised that it's really difficult to get a good presentation out of it. So it can look a little cheap, too. Anyone who decides to use it should feel free to contact me directly (not in this thread) for a list of techniques for hacking SM surveys.

Zoomerang is much more expensive -- $600/yr for commercial for-profit use. It's much more presentable, and gives more out of the box options for things like including images, dynamic skip logic, etc.

(W.r.t. the "chintz-factor" -- i.e., "I'd delete that link if I got it" -- it's all in the presentation. If it's a link from a website, that's not an issue; and if you frame your context carefully [including careful crafting of your email copy and careful selection of the audience] automatic deletion should be no more of a problem with SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang than with any other link -- such as your own.)
posted by lodurr at 5:48 AM on June 15, 2006