Fine Tune Survey

This section explains how to fine tune your survey with SurveyGold. It explains how to reuse and reorder sections and questions. It also explains how to skip from one question to another conditionally depending upon the response given by a respondent. Finally, it shows how to quickly print a survey questionnaire form.

• Reusing a Section or Question from Another Survey

  You can quickly create new surveys by reusing sections or questions from any other survey. The following example explains how to copy a question from another survey.

  Note: When you copy a question from one survey to another, all of the question properties (except Skip To Question Based On Response) are copied as well. That means that if the question you are copying has choices, they are included in the question when it is copied to a new survey. When you copy a section from one survey to another, all of the questions within that section are copied to the new survey.

   

  	Step 1 - From the SETUP SURVEY tab folder, click the + next to your survey. This expands your survey displaying all its sections.
  	Step 2 - Click the + next to the survey that contains the question you want to copy into your survey. This expands the survey displaying all its sections. The example here shows you clicking on the "Sample Survey".
  	Step 3 - On the left side, click on the section containing the question you want to copy into your survey.  This causes all questions contained in this section to appear in the listview on the right. This example here shows you clicking on the "About You" section of the "Sample Survey". Note: Although this example shows how to copy one question at a time, it is possible to copy multiple questions at a time. To do so, simply select multiple questions by holding down CTRL key and clicking on each of the questions you want to copy.
  	Step 4 - On the right side, right-click on the question you want to copy and select "Copy to a Survey Section from the  popup menu. The example here shows you selecting the "Your Age" question to copy. Note: If you have already selected multiple questions to copy in step 4, simply right-click on any of the selected questions and select "Copy to a Survey Section" from the popup menu.
  	Step 5 - Next, the Copy To Section window appears. From the first list, select the survey to receive the question you selected in step 4. When you select a survey from the first list, the second list displays a list of all sections in that survey. From the second list, select the section to receive the question you selected in step 4.
  	Step 6 - Click OK to copy the selected question to the specified survey and section. Then, on the left side, click the section that received your copied question. You will see the newly copied question in that section. Note: The process of copying entire sections is identical to this. The only difference is that in step 3 you click the survey that contains the section you want to copy. Then, in step 4 you right-click on the section that you want to copy and select "Copy to Another Survey" from the popup menu. The window in step 5 displays only a Copy To Survey window.

   

• Reordering Sections or Questions - Changing the sequence of sections or questions is accomplished by dragging a section or question and dropping it in a new position.

   

  Step 1 - From the treeview on the left, select a section that contains the question. Then, using the listview on the right, drag the question you want to reorder to the desired position. Then drop it. Note: The process of reordering a section is identical to this. The only difference is that you begin by first selecting your survey. Then, you use the listview of sections on the right to reorder your sections.

  Step 2 - When you drop the question in the desired position, the listview reorders the questions.

   

• Skipping to Other Questions Based on a Response

  You may want the flow of questions to change depending upon the response given by a respondent to a particular question. In the following example, a question regarding  payment of membership dues causes the flow of questions to go to one of two question.

  Note: The following steps can only be accomplished if the question has choices and only one response is allowed. If the question properties do not meet those two criteria, then skipping is not allowed.

   

  	Step 1 - Click the + next to your survey. This expands your survey displaying all its sections.
  	Step 2 - On the left side, Click on the section containing the skipping question. This causes all questions contained in this section to appear in the listview on the right.
  	Step 3 - Double-click on the skipping question. This opens the Question Properties Sheet for your question. In this example, the question "Did you pay your dues this year?" is opened. Click on the Skip To Question tab. Note: The Skip To Question tab is only enabled if 1 is entered in the "Specify number of responses allowed" field in the Response Style tab.
  	Step 4 - Notice that for every choice, there is an associated Skip To Question.
  	Step 5 - In the Skip To Question column, click the down arrow in the Yes response row. This displays a list of all questions.
  	Step 6 - Select which question to skip to if a respondent were to answer Yes.
  	Step 7 - In the Skip To Question column, click the down arrow in the No response row. This displays a list of all questions.
  	Step 8 - Select which question to skip to if a respondent were to answer No.
  	Step 9 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the Question Properties Sheet and returns control to the SETUP SURVEY tab folder.

• Previewing Your Printed Survey Questionnaire Form

You can quickly and easily print a professional-looking survey questionnaire form based on your survey questions. You can preview what this printed questionnaire would look like at any time.

	Step 1 - Right-click on your survey and select Print Preview from the popup menu. This displays a preview of your printed questionnaire.
	Step 2 - Right-click in the print preview window to access a popup menu of options to navigate and print your survey.

 

• Printing Your Survey Questionnaire Form

  You can print a professional-looking questionnaire based on your survey questions at any time.

  Step 1 - Right-click on your survey and select Print to produce a survey questionnaire form.

• Making a Copy of Your Survey

This feature makes it easy for you to duplicate an existing survey so that you can tweak it for another use.

	Step 1 - Right-click on your survey and select Copy Survey to create a copy of the survey.
	Step 2 - Enter the name of the survey to be created and click OK to begin the copy process.
	Step 3 - A status window appears as the copy process progresses.
	Step 4 - When the process is complete, click OK to see the newly-created copy of your survey in the survey treeview.

• Saving Your Survey Questionnaire Form as a Text File

If you want to create your survey questionnaire with minimal formatting, you may choose to save your survey as a text file. In the following example, you will see how easy it is to save your survey into a text file.

	Step 1 - Right-click on the survey you want to save as a text file. Select "Save as Text File" from the popup menu.
	Step 2 - When the "Save Survey as Text File" window appears, verify that the file name is to your liking. Note: SurveyGold automatically names the file using the survey name (removing any spaces from the name). However, you may rename the file to any name of your choosing prior to clicking "Save".
	Step 3 - Click "Save". SurveyGold then creates your survey in a text file. Upon completion, it opens the text file in the Notepad editor. From there you can use Notepad to further edit the questionnaire and print it accordingly.

• Saving Your Survey Questionnaire as a Microsoft Word™ Document

If you prefer even more flexibility in how your survey questionnaire is formatted, you may choose to save your survey as a Microsoft Word™ document. In the following example, you will see how easy it is to save your survey into a Word™ document.

Note: SurveyGold only allows a survey to be saved as a Word™ document if Microsoft Word™ is installed on your computer. SurveyGold detects the presence or absence of Microsoft Word™ on your computer and enables or disables the feature accordingly.

 

	Step 1 - Right-click on the survey you want to save as a text file. Select "Save as Word File" from the popup menu.
	Step 2 - When the "Save Survey as Word File" window appears, verify that the file name is to your liking. Note: SurveyGold automatically names the file using the survey name (removing any spaces from the name). However, you may rename the file to any name of your choosing prior to clicking "Save".
	Step 3 - Click "Save". SurveyGold then creates your survey in a Word™ document. Upon completion, it opens the Word™ document in Word™. From there you can use Word™ to edit the questionnaire, alter the formatting to your liking and print it accordingly.

• Saving Your Survey Questionnaire as a Web Form and Publishing It

If you want to create a web questionnaire form for use in a web browser, you may choose to save your survey as a web form. In the following example, you will see how easy it is to save your survey as a web form. The process is identical for saving your survey as a text file or Word™ document. The only difference is that upon creation of your web form, you typically copy the web form to an Internet web site for respondents to access and complete your survey.

Note: SurveyGold makes it easy for any survey to be saved as a web form. It uses hypertext markup language (HTML) to create the web form. Hence, the file name is created with a .HTM extension for the last three letters. The resulting file contains a your questions and response set in what is commonly referred to as an HTML form. The bottom of the HTML form contains a "Submit" button. When the "Submit Your Responses" button is clicked by a web survey respondent, their web responses are processed in one of two ways. Email - Responses entered into the form are emailed to a specified email address. Typically this is your email address. This requires no email software on the respondent's computer. The email process is enabled by a small program (called an HTML form handler) that resides on the SurveyGold web site. When the web survey respondent clicks the "Submit Your Responses" button, the web responses are detected by this program and emailed.  Record - Responses entered into the form are recorded on the surveygold.com web site. You can later download these responses directly into your SurveyGold program. A notification of new web survey responses is sent to the email address that you specify in the process of saving the web form. This requires no email software on the respondent's computer. The email process is enabled by a small program (called an HTML form handler) that resides on the SurveyGold web site. When the web survey respondent clicks the "Submit Your Responses" button, the web responses are detected by this program and recorded.  In either case, the following steps show you how to specify the aforementioned email address.

 

	Step 1 - Right-click on the survey you want to save as a web survey file. Select "Save as Web Form" from the popup menu.
	Step 2 - When the "Save Survey as Web Form" window appears, verify that the file name is to your liking. Note: SurveyGold automatically names the file using the survey name (removing spaces from the name to make it work better on a web site). However, you may rename the file to any name of your choosing prior to clicking "Save".
	Step 3 - Click "Save". A window appears to let you select how you want your web survey responses processed. Your options are: Email When a web survey respondent submits their survey responses, those responses are immediately emailed to the email address that you specify. The email message is optimally formatted so that you can quickly enter them into SurveyGold using the CONDUCT SURVEY tab. (In that tab, you would click on the Create New Respondent button to create a respondent record for the newly submitted response. Then you would click Start Survey to record the responses you received via the email.) Record When a web survey respondent submits their survey responses, those responses are recorded in a folder on the SurveyGold web site. This feature is also known as the "round-trip" web survey feature. To collect these responses so that you may view and analyze the results, simply click the GET WEB RESPONSES button in the CONDUCT SURVEY tab folder.
	Step 4 - Specify an email address using the following guidelines. How the email address is used depends upon the choice you made in step 3: If you selected Email SurveyGold uses this email address to email responses. The email address specified receives an email for each web survey submitted by a respondent. If you selected Record SurveyGold uses this email address to notify you when a respondent has submitted responses to your web survey. The email address specified receives an email for the first respondent on a given day. This keeps your email InBox from being deluged with email notifications.  To prevent individuals from responding to your web survey more than once, select the checkbox entitled "Detect and prohibit multiple submissions from the same respondent". To allow individuals to respond to your web survey more than once, uncheck the aforementioned checkbox. To include the web address from which the response was submitted (also know as the TCP/IP address), select the checkbox entitled "Include the web address of each respondent in responses they submit". (This option is available only via Email option. The Record option automatically includes the web address.)
	Step 5 - Click OK. SurveyGold then creates your web survey file. Upon completion, it opens your web browser and displays your newly created web survey. Test your survey by completing the form and clicking "Submit Your Responses" button. Note: You can adjust the way that choices and/or response text boxes are displayed in a web survey. For example, you may prefer a combo box of choices as opposed to radio buttons. Or you may prefer a one-line text box for a particular question rather than a multi-line text box. These kind of adjustments can be made via the Response Style tab in the Question Properties Sheet (accessible by right-clicking on the question via the Setup Survey main menu tab).
	Step 6 - Open your email program to check for web survey responses.  Note: For your information, your web survey form attempts to contact the SurveyGold web site immediately after web survey respondent clicks the "Submit Your Responses" button in the web survey form. Web responses are processed immediately on the SurveyGold web site.  The implication of immediate processing here means that if your web survey form used the "email" processing option, you should immediately receive an email that contains your submitted test responses. If your web survey form used the "record" processing option and you selected the email notification checkbox when saving the web survey form in step 4, you should immediately receive an email that contains instructions explaining how to get your web survey responses.  If you do not immediately receive a web survey response email, this indicates that their may be a delay in your email system in delivering your email to your, or you may have entered an invalid email address. To eliminate the potential of an invalid email address, try creating the web file again starting with Step 1. Make sure that you use the full email name including the domain name after the @ sign.
	Step 7 - Copy the web survey file to an appropriate location on your web site to begin conducting your survey. You can also email the web survey to a respondent as an attachment or simply include a link to the survey on your web site in the email.

• Tweaking How Your Web Survey Appears

SurveyGold provides you with many options for customizing the look your web survey. The options that you specify here take effect when you save your survey as a web survey form.

Formatting Choices as Radio Buttons, Checkboxes, Drop-Down Menus

For questions with choices, you can customize how those choices appear. 

	Step 1 - From the SETUP SURVEY tab folder, click on your section in the treeview on the left side. This causes all questions contained in your section to appear in the listview on the right.
	Step 2 - Double-click your question to display the question properties sheet.
	Step 3 - Click on the Response Style tab.  Here you can specify the number of responses required. If "1" is selected, the choices can be displayed as either radio buttons or a drop-down menu.  If "Any number of responses" is selected (or if you enter a number other than 1), the choices can be displayed as either checkboxes or a drop-down menu allowing multiple responses. You can also specify whether or not you want a response to the question to be required in a web survey form. Specifying the question as required means that the respondent cannot submit responses until a response is provided to this question.
	Step 4 - Click OK to save your question response style preferences and close the question properties sheet. These preferences take effect the next time that you save your web survey form.

 

Formatting Fill-in-the-Blank Questions

For questions without choices, you can also customize how those responses appear via the Response Style tab in the question properties sheet. Here you can specify the number of responses required. If "Only one response" is selected, the response field can be displayed as one-line text box or a scrolling text box. If you require a specified number of responses, enter that number and SurveyGold creates that number of response fields as either a one-line text box or a scrolling text box depending upon which you choose. If "Any number of responses" is selected, SurveyGold creates three response fields as either a one-line text box or a scrolling text box depending upon which you choose. 

	Step 1 - From the SETUP SURVEY tab folder, click on your section in the treeview on the left side. This causes all questions contained in your section to appear in the listview on the right.
	Step 2 - Double-click your question to display the Question Properties Sheet.
	Step 3 - Click on the Response Style tab.  Here you can specify the number of responses required. If "1" is selected, the fill-in-the-blank field can be displayed as either a one line text box or as a scrolling text box. Note that you can adjust the height and width of the text boxes. This affects how the many lines high and how many characters wide the text boxes will appear for this question in the web survey form. If a number other than one is selected, the choices can be displayed as either a one line text boxes or as a scrolling text boxes. The number you specify here determines how many such text boxes the web survey form will have for this question. If you specify "Any number of responses", the web survey form will contain three text boxes.  You can also specify whether or not you want a response to the question to be required in a web survey form. Specifying the question as required means that the respondent cannot submit responses until a response is provided to this question.
	Step 4 - Click OK to save your question response style preferences and close the Question Properties Sheet. These preferences take effect the next time that you save your web survey form.

 

Specifying Font and Color Preferences

SurveyGold automatically creates a professionally-formatted web survey form. If you would rather not use the automatic SurveyGold formatting, you may turn off that feature via the Advanced button in the Create Web Survey Form window. click the Advanced button and select "Minimal" from the "Visual Format" field. Click OK to produce web survey form that has minimal formatting.

If you would like to specify your own font and color preferences, you may do so via the Advanced button in to Create Web Survey Form window. Once you specify a set of font and color preferences, you give the set a name. You may later use this defined set of preferences when saving web survey forms in the future. You can define any number of preferences sets.

	Step 1 - When the "Save Survey As File" window is open, click the Advanced button to display additional advanced web survey settings.
	Step 2 - Click the "Custom..." button. The "Web Survey - Custom Visual Format" window opens.
	Step 3 - Specify a web survey form element by selecting it from the list or by clicking it in the preview pane on the right. Then change the color and font preference in the "Specify color" and "Specify font" group boxes in the window. This example shows the form background color selected and the color set to aqua. Note: Several standard colors are provided for quick selection in the "Specify color" group box. In addition, you may specify your own custom colors by manipulating the Red, Blue and Green sliders.   Note: Not all form elements have a font characteristic. In those cases, when a form element without a font characteristic is selected, the "Specify font" group box is disabled. For example, the form background element does not have a font characteristic. It only has a color characteristic.  Note: It is important to use care when selecting a font. Fonts are not embedded in the web survey form. In other words, any font that you specify must be installed on your respondent's computer. Therefore, just because a font is available and displays faithfully on your computer does not mean that is available on your respondent's computer. If the font you specify is not available on the respondent's computer, then their web browser will display another "default" font automatically. That's the way of the web world.
	Step 4 - To specify color and font preferences for other form elements, select them one at a time by selecting them from the list or by clicking them in the preview pane on the right. Then change the color and font preferences accordingly in the "Specify color" and "Specify font" group boxes. This example shows the question font set to a 14-point "Vernada" with a white color.
	Step 5 - When the font and color preferences are to your liking, enter a name for preference set. This example shows that the name "Simply Cyan" is applied to our set of font and color preferences.
	Step 6 - Click OK to return to the "Save Survey As Form" window. Your newly-defined preference set name appears in the "Visual Format" field.
	Step 7 - Click OK to produce a web survey form with your font and color preferences.

If you would like to further enhance the look of the web file that SurveyGold creates, you may edit the file with an HTML editor (such as Microsoft FrontPage Express, etc.) and make changes to the look and feel. It is important, however, that you not change any of question numbers, the order of the questions or the form item names. This could result in unpredictable responses or no responses being emailed back.

 

Specifying a Custom Response Confirmation Message

When a respondent clicks the "Submit Your Responses" button in a web survey form, SurveyGold automatically displays a confirmation message thanking the respondent for submitting responses. If you would rather replace this with your own confirmation message or simply want to redirect the respondent to your web site after submitting responses, you can easily do this as follows.

Step 1 - Using an HTML editor (such as FrontPage, etc.) create a web file that contains your response message. Then copy that web file to a location on your web sever. For example, let's say that the location of the file you have created is at http://yourwebsite.com/surveythankyou.htm.

Step 2 - When saving your web survey file in SETUP SURVEY, specify the location of your web file via the Advanced button in the "Create Web Survey Form" window. Click the Advanced button and enter the location in the "Location of survey submission confirmation message:" field. Per our example, you would enter http://yourwebsite.com/surveythankyou.htm and then click OK. That is all that is required.

 

Specifying a Custom "Required Field(s) Missing" Message

When a respondent clicks the " Submit Your Responses" button in a web survey form and one or more required fields is omitted, SurveyGold automatically displays a message that instructs the respondent to click the browser's Back button and complete the missing required fields. If you would like to specify the text of the instructing message, you can do this as follows:

Step 1 - When saving your web survey file in SETUP SURVEY, specify the custom message text via the Advanced button in the " Create Web Survey Form" window. Click the Advanced button and enter the custom message text in the "Message to display when a required field is missing:" field. Per our example, you could enter text such as "Click the Back button and try again." and then click OK. That is all that is required.

 

Include a "Clear All Responses" Button to Reset the Form

Sometimes you may want to use the web survey form as a data entry tool. In this way, you can distribute the web survey form to multiple data entry personnel for them to enter web survey responses collected via phone or paper form. 

In this context, it helps to have a button to clear all of the web survey responses. A web survey respondent who is doing repetitive data entry from paper-based survey forms could use this button after clicking the "Submit Your Responses" button. After seeing the confirmation message displayed in their web browser, the web survey respondent would click their browser's Back button and the web survey form would reappear with all of the just-submitted responses contained in it. The web survey respondent would then click the "Clear All Responses" button to clear all of the responses from the form in order to allow for a new set of responses to be entered. Here is how to do this:

Step 1 - When saving your web survey file in SETUP SURVEY, click Advanced button. Check the checkbox entitled "Include a "Clear All Responses" button to reset the web survey form" and click OK. That is all that is required.

 

Creating a Matrix of Questions with the Same Choices

The section properties sheet includes a checkbox that instructs SurveyGold to create a matrix using all questions in the section when all of the questions have the identical choices. When saving a web survey, this has the effect of creating a matrix whereby the questions appear in separate rows and the choices appear at the top of each column. The respondent can select a response using a radio button (if only one response is allowed) or a checkbox (if more than one response is allowed.)

Here is an example of a matrix:

	Strongly Agree	Agree	Disagree	Strongly Disagree
1. I like pie.
2. I like pizza.
3. I like steak.

Note that all of the questions have the exact same choices. The big idea here is that the matrix feature only works when both of the following conditions are met:

• The matrix option is checked in the section properties sheet.
• Every question in the section has the exact same set of choices.

For this reason, the preferred way to create a matrix of questions is as follows:

	Step 1 - From the SETUP SURVEY tab folder, click on your section in the treeview on the left side. Click the New Section button, enter the section name in the window, and click the OK button. The example to the left creates a section entitled "Your Food Preferences".
	Step 2 - Click the New Question button.
	Step 3 - Enter your question, make sure the "Use choices from the most recent new question" checkbox is unchecked and click OK. The example to the left demonstrates a question entitled "I like pie".
	Step 4 - In the Question Properties Sheet, enter your choices and click OK to create your question. The example to the left demonstrates entering the following choices: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.
	Step 5 - Click the New Question button.
	Step 6 - Enter your next question, make sure the "Use choices from the most recent new question" checkbox is checked and click OK. The example to the left demonstrates a question entitled "I like pizza".
	Step 7 - In the Question Properties Sheet, notice that your choices are already entered. (This is because the checkbox was checked in the previous set.) Click OK to create your question. The example to the left demonstrates entering the following choices: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.
	Repeat Steps 5 through 7 - For every question in the section, repeat the previous three steps. This will ensure that all of the questions in the section have identical choices. The example to the left demonstrates a question entitled "I like steak".
	Save Survey As Web Form - When you save your survey as a web form, you will see that the section is created in a matrix presentation style. Click the image to the left to see an example of a SurveyGold web survey question matrix.

 

Continue on to the next section: Setup Respondents