Setup Survey

The Setup Survey tab folder is the place to create surveys and maintain respondents. The process of creating a survey is the same regardless of how you intend to conduct your survey. In fact, you can conduct the exact same survey on the web, over the phone or with a questionnaire.

• Naming Your Survey - Creating and naming your survey is quick and easy.
  

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, select the folder to which you want to add the survey. Then click the New Survey button.
  	Step 2 - Enter a name for your survey and click OK. The name you enter is also used as the title of the questionnaire. The example to the left demonstrates a survey entitled "Membership Survey".
  	Step 3 - The survey properties sheet for your survey opens next. Here you can enter a description of the survey, specify respondents, specify respondent data to collect and specify instructions to include on the printed survey questionnaire. Note: You can access survey properties and change properties at any time after you create a survey by double-clicking on the survey to open the survey properties sheet. Note: The description you enter will be displayed in the SurveyGold Results Viewer as well as in the published Word Report. This description is intended to help you distinguish one set of survey results from another.
  	Step 4 - Enter a brief survey objective and description of respondents. The example to the left portrays a membership survey of a volunteer organization. Note: SurveyGold automatically creates survey instructions for you when you create a new survey. These instructions are printed at the top of the questionnaire. You may change survey instructions at any time after you create a survey by double-clicking on the survey to open the survey properties sheet. Survey instructions are optional. If you leave the instructions field blank, no instructions will appear at the top of the questionnaire.
  	Step 5 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the survey properties sheet and prompts you to create a survey section. Click OK to create your first survey section. Then continue with Step 3 in Creating Your Survey Sections below. Note: The discussion on the Include These Respondents and Collect This Respondent Data tabs in the survey properties sheet is intentionally omitted this time. The topic of respondents is discussed in the Setup Respondents section of the user guide.

   

• Creating Your Survey Sections - SurveyGold organizes surveys into sets of related questions call sections. A survey is comprised of one or more sections.

  As a survey author you may want to include a set of questions that captures the demographic traits of  your respondents. To do this you could create a section entitled "About You". This section could then include demographic questions pertinent to your survey such as gender, age, membership in years, etc.

  Productivity Note: After creating a section, you can copy the entire section, questions and all, to any other survey you subsequently create by simply dragging and dropping the section onto another survey in the treeview. This makes it possible to quickly create new surveys by borrowing question from other existing surveys.

  Creating a section is similar to creating a survey. Repeat the following steps for each survey section you want to create. 

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, click on your survey in the treeview on the left side. This causes all sections contained in your survey to appear in the listview on the right. If your survey contains no sections, then no sections appear on the right.
  	Step 2 - Click the New Section button.
  	Step 3 - Enter a name for your section and click OK. In addition to appearing here, the name you enter is also used as the section title of the questionnaire. The example herein demonstrates creating a section entitled "About You". Note: Now that your survey has a section, notice the - next to your survey in the treeview on the left side. This denotes that the survey has one or more sections.
  	Step 4 (Optional) - Double-click the section to open the section properties sheet. Here you can enter optional section instructions and click OK. Any section instructions you enter will appear in your survey after the section title and before the first question in the section. The discussion of other items in the section properties sheet is deferred until later.

   

• Creating Your Questions - To add a question to your survey, you include it in a section. Creating a question is similar to creating a section. Repeat the following steps for each survey question you want to create.
  

  Note: To clarify a point about how surveys are organized in SurveyGold, a question can only be included in a section. That is why each survey is required to have at least one section. Stated another way, you cannot add questions directly to a survey. You must first create a section within a survey. Then you can add a question to the section.

   

  	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. If your section contains no questions, then no questions appear on the right.
  	Step 2 - Click the New Question button.
  	Step 3 - Enter your question and click OK. The example to the left demonstrates a question entitled "Gender". Note: The checkbox entitled "Use choices from the most recent new question" is available as a time-saver. If you want to repeat the same choices for several questions that you are adding then check this box. Doing so will automatically populate your question with the choices from the most recent question you have created.
  	Step 4 - The question properties sheet for your question opens next.  Here you can specify: a set of choices (optional) how many responses are allowed web form settings such as presentation style, text field formatting and validation  (For more information on web form settings, see Fine Tune Survey and in particular Tweaking How Your Web Survey Appears) where the survey flow should skip to based on a response given by a respondent abbreviated chart titles for long questions (displayed in View Results or Analyze Results in lieu of the original question to improve readability) whether or not the respondent is to rank responses weighting index values Note: You can access question properties and change properties at any time after you create a question by double-clicking on the question to open the question properties sheet. Note: The number of responses you specify affects the prompt provided for this question in the printed survey questionnaire form. For example, if you enter several choices and specify in the Response Style tab that multiple responses are allowed, this causes the prompt "(Select all that apply.)" to appear just above the choice in the printed survey questionnaire form.
  	Step 5 - If your question requires a set of choices for the respondent to select from, enter them one at a time. Simply type them in and press Enter. In the example to the left, the choice "Male" has just been entered. The choice "Female" is about to be included in the list by pressing Enter. Note: If you want a small fill-in-the-blank field alongside the last choice in the set, then select the "Include an open-ended choice in the set" checkbox. For example, if you wanted your last choice to be "Other" followed by a fill-in-the-blank field, then you would check the checkbox and enter "Other" in the Prompt field.
  	Step 6 - If you want to change the order in which choices appear, simply click the Move Up or Move Down buttons as appropriate. In the example to the left, the choice "Female" is repositioned to appear before "Male". Note: To create a question where the responses must be ranked by the respondent, select the first tab and enter a specific number other than 0 or 1 in the field that specifies the number of choices and then check the rank order checkbox.
  	Step 7 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the Question Properties Sheet and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder. Note: Each new question you create automatically sets number of responses to "Only one response". This means that only one response is allowed for a question unless you change the number of responses to some other value. Note: The discussion on the remaining tabs in the question properties sheet is deferred until later in the Fine Tune Survey and View Results sections of the user guide.

   

• Specifying Respondent Data to Collect in Your Survey - The collection of survey respondent data is optional. If your survey requires the collection of respondent data, SurveyGold creates a special section in your survey that prompts the respondent for any or all of the following data: first and last name, job title, address, city, state/province, postal code, phone, fax, email and any of four user-defined fields. This special section is placed in the survey either before the first section or after the last section.

Note: When conducting your survey as a web survey form employing the "Record" processing method, any respondent data collected via this special section is automatically be imported into SurveyGold when the Get Web Responses button is clicked in the Conduct Survey tab folder.

 

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click your survey treeview item and select Properties from the popup menu.
	Step 2 - When the Survey Properties Sheet opens, click the Collect This Respondent Data tab. Here you can specify the following: Which respondent data to collect in your survey How the prompts for respondent data are presented in your survey Where the special respondent data section appears in your survey
	Step 3 - Click the checkbox next to each respondent data field you want to appear in your survey. When a check appears in a checkbox, note that the cursor moves to the prompt field associated with that data field. Any modifications you make here in the prompt field will appear in your survey. For example, if you are conducting a survey of USA residents, you may choose to enter the phrase "Zip Code" instead of "Postal Code". Note: Respondent data can be specified as required or optional via the "Required" checkbox to the right of each respondent data field. Specifying a respondent field as required places an asterisk suffix on the prompt and makes it so that a web survey form cannot be submitted without the field being completed by the respondent.
	Step 4 - Click in the field entitled "2. Specify a section title to display above the selected prompts." Any modifications you make here in this field will appear in the special section heading.
	Step 5 - Click in the field entitled "3. Specify where to location this section." When the dropdown list appears, select where you would like for this special section to appear in your survey, either at the beginning of the survey or the end of the survey.
	Step 6 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the Survey Properties Sheet and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder. Note: This special section does not appear in the Setup Survey treeview or listview items associated with your survey. Rather, it appears in your survey form when you print it or when you save it as a text file, Word file or Web file.

 

• Setting Up Scoring / Creating an Exam - In addition to creating survey questionnaires, SurveyGold also provides the ability to create examinations or tests. In this context, each question can have an "optimal" response associated with it. This "optimal" response is the correct or preferred response to a question. Also, each question can optionally have a point value associated with it. The total number of points for an entire survey can be established up to a maximum of 1,000 points.

After you specify optimal responses to questions and assign point values, SurveyGold automatically displays the optimal responses in the various actions in the View Results and Analyze Results tabs. In addition, the Analyze Results tab produces a roster or respondents and derives a score for each respondent based upon the responses they provided. This is a huge time savings when compared with manually scoring exams.

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click the your survey treeview item and select Setup Scoring from the popup menu.
	Step 2 - When the Setup Scoring panel displays, enter the total point value (from zero to 1000) for the survey in the first field. For each question, enter an appropriate point value and select the optimal response from the dropdown list of choices. Note: If you intend to use your survey form as an exam, you should specify a survey total point value greater than zero. Then you should assign appropriate point values and optimal answers to each question. If you desire for the point value of each question to appear on your exam questionnaire, select the second checkbox. When setting up scoring, SurveyGold checks to make sure that the sum of the point values of individual questions equals the survey total point value specified. If the two values are out of balance, a warning message appears to that effect.  After the exam is conducted, the View Results and Analyze Results tabs use the individual question point values and optimal answers to derive a total score for each respondent's submitted responses. Note: If you do not intend to use your survey form as an exam, but still want to specify a "preferred" or "correct" answer for each question (to compare actual responses against), you should set the survey total point value to zero. Then you should assign a zero point value and optimal answers (as appropriate) to each question. After the survey is conducted, the View Results or Analyze Results tabs display the optimal answers  alongside the actual responses given. However, when the survey total point value is set to zero SurveyGold will neither derive nor display a score for each individual respondent's completed questionnaire.
	Step 3 - After you finish entering the individual question point values and optimal responses, click the GO BACK button in the toolbar to close the Setup Scoring panel and return to the Setup Survey tab.

• Setting Up a Weighting Index

SurveyGold optionally provides the ability to define a set of attributes (such as "cost", "dependability", "accuracy", etc.) and associate them with your survey via the survey properties sheet. You can then assign any one of these attributes to a question choice along with an integer score (positive or negative) via the question properties sheet. Theses attributes can be assigned before, during or after the survey responses are collected into SurveyGold.

In this context, the survey is an instrument intended to measure one or more quantitative attributes. Each question response has one or more integer values (positive or negative) associated with a particular attribute. Upon submission of all responses to a survey, these integer values can be aggregated to determine the quantitative value of each attribute.

Examples of this kind of survey application include:

• Meyers-Briggs, DISC or other similar personality profiles.

• Business retention and expansion surveys assessing characteristics such as risk, incentives, etc.

• School, employee, team, work-life climate surveys

When viewing results in the Analyze Results feature, the Weighting Index report for an individual or set of respondents multiplies the relative importance of a attribute against the score awarded to a question addressing that attribute. The result is a new view of survey results that gives consideration to relative importance of the attributes you have defined.

The formula used to derive the weighting index for a given attribute is as follows:

    weighting index for attribute  =  score  x  attribute weight

The following example shows how to setup the attributes for your survey. It is followed by an example of how to assign those attributes to question response choices.

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click the your survey treeview item and select Setup Weighting Index from the popup menu. This opens the Setup Weighting Index panel.
	Step 2 - Click the Add Attribute button to define your weighting index attribute.
	Step 3 - Enter the attribute name and the weight of the attribute as compared to other attributes. In this example, an attribute named "Assertive" is given a weight of 10. Note: Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each weighting index attribute you want to add to your survey.
	Step 4 - After adding all of your attributes, click the Go Back button to return to close the Setup Weighting Index panel.

After defining your weighting index attributes, you can then assign these attributes to question response choices. The following example shows how to do this with a question that already has choices defined. You could, of course, define the response choices and assign weighting index attributes to those choices all at the same time. However, for the sake of clarity, this example assumes that response choices have already been defined.

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, double-click on a question or right-click and select Properties to open the question properties sheet.
	Step 2 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, double-click on a question or right-click and select Properties to open the question properties sheet. When the question properties sheet opens, select the Weighting Index tab to display the attribute and score assignment feature.
	Step 3 - Assign the attribute and score for each response choice. In this example, the question is "I like bossing people around". This is a question that is measuring the "Assertive" weighting index attribute. So, we assign a +4 to the first choice, +1 to the second, -1 to the third choice and -4 to the fourth choice.
	Step 4 - Click OK to close the question properties sheet and save your weighting index settings for this question.

You can generate reports using this feature via the weighting index reports in the Analyze Results tab. 

• Locking Your Survey to Prevent Modification or Access to Optimal Answers - SurveyGold provides an easy way for you to lock your survey so that you (or others) cannot modify or access the structure or contents of the survey, sections or any of its questions from within the Setup Survey feature. A survey may be locked with or without a password. If a password is used, the password must be entered to subsequently unlock the survey.

Locking a survey makes it unalterable once it has been finalized and approved. You may not necessarily use a password when you are locking a survey for this reason. Locking a survey also prevents others from viewing the optimal responses to surveys that you intend to use as an exam or test. You would normally want to use a password when you are locking a survey for this reason.

The following example shows you how to lock a survey using a password. .

Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click the your survey treeview item and select Lock from the popup menu.

Step 2 - When the Lock Survey window appears, enter a password in the first field. This password will be required to subsequently unlock the survey. Verify you password by entering again in the second field. Then click the OK button.  SurveyGold returns you to the Setup Survey tab. Note that a picture of a lock appears next to your survey denoting that your survey is now locked. Note: Using a password is optional. If you do not specify a password when locking your survey, then no password is required to unlock your survey from within the Setup Survey feature.

• Unlocking a Locked Survey - Locking a survey prevents it from being altered. It also prevents sensitive data, such as optimal response choices for graded questionnaires, from being seen without permission. A survey may be locked with or without a password. If a password is used, the password must be entered to subsequently unlock the survey.

If you are a survey author and wish to alter a locked survey, it is necessary to unlock the survey. If you have imported a survey from a survey definition file, the survey that you have imported is locked with a password and the password must be acquired from the original author before you can unlock the survey.

The following example shows you how to unlock a survey using a password

Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click the your locked survey treeview item to display the popup menu. Note that the Locked menu item has a check next to it denoting that the survey is locked. Select the Locked menu item.

Step 2 - When the Unlock Survey window appears, enter the password to unlock the survey. Then click the OK button. SurveyGold returns the Setup Survey tab. Note that a picture of a lock no longer appears next to your survey denoting that your survey is unlocked. Note: If you did not specify a password when you locked your survey, then no password is required to unlock your survey from within the Setup Survey feature. Consequently, in that case the Unlock Survey window does not appear.

Continue on to the next section: Fine Tune Your Survey