Survey tool

July 22, 2015 2:43 PM

Looking for a free (or inexpensive) online survey tool that will allow a group of users to scroll through a list of 700 items and select any number of about five checkboxes alongside each. Yes, 700 items. And I place a high priority on not having to retype them into the form builder. All of the tools I've seen so far don't seem to allow importing of text. Are there any that do?
posted by Framer to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Virtually all tools that I know of will allow this. Google Forms is the easiest. It doesn't allow "import" but if you have a list of things (in an Excel file or in a list in Word or something) you can just copy and paste them into the first box and they'll separate correctly. From what you say you want a "grid" question and you want to paste your 700 items into the Rows and then define your columns.

But I bet that any tool you're looking at will work if you copy all your 700 things and paste them into the first box, so just try out the one that you like the best and see if that works.
posted by brainmouse at 2:55 PM on July 22, 2015

Response by poster: Yeah, I can do the copy and paste, but am hoping there's something out there that will let me import all of the items from a .csv or text file. I tried what you suggested with Google Forms, the one I have the most experience with, and it just pasted everything into the first question, so that won't work...
posted by Framer at 3:05 PM on July 22, 2015

The last time I used it was many releases ago, but checkbox survey software used to support this feature.
posted by phil at 3:16 PM on July 22, 2015

I tried what you suggested with Google Forms

Weird - I just tested it with an Excel file and 800+ rows and it worked perfectly. Does it work if you open your csv/txt file in Google Forms and then paste into Google Docs?
posted by brainmouse at 3:25 PM on July 22, 2015

Response by poster: brainmouse: it works when I copy from an Excel file and paste it into the first 'Question type' box -- it creates as many options for the question as there were rows in the sheet -- but not if I try to paste it into the 'Question Title' field.
posted by Framer at 6:01 PM on July 22, 2015

I don't know whether these platforms would solve your problem, but it may be worth looking at Qualtrics or REDCap, which are both fairly feature rich data gathering tools. I'm not sure if REDCap would be available to a person not affiliated with an academic institution. I think Qualtrics has a free version.
posted by reren at 3:14 PM on July 23, 2015