15.8 Questionnaire design tools#
There are many questionnaire-design tools available commercially or developed by international statistical organizations and NSOs. A number of the more widely used ones are described below.
BLAISE is a software system developed by Statistics Netherlands used for statistical and scientific research. It is used for creating and processing computer-assisted surveys of varying size and complexity and supports questionnaire design and all types of computer-assisted data collection. It can be used to create small and simple questionnaires and large, complex and hierarchically structured questionnaire models and to link them to available external data files. In addition to questionnaire design, Blaise provides data entry facilities for all the various interview modes; namely, computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI), computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), all of which can be combined within a survey. For telephone interviewing (CATI), a complete management system is available to schedule calls to respondents automatically, and follow-up calls after busy or no-answer responses. System developers can customize or expand the functionality of Blaise applications to use in their own applications.
Survey Solutions is free software developed by the World Bank. It supports questionnaire design with a full range of standard questions, nesting, cascading and linked questions. It supports validation of answers and direction of interview flow using .Net; use macros, calculated variables and lookup tables to construct sophisticated data validation algorithms. It enables collection of data offline on tablets (CAPI), online using web-interface (CAWI), from phone interviews (CATI), and conduct of mixed-mode surveys. It can scan barcodes, capture pictures and audio, and record information from external sensors. It facilitates collection of detailed GIS information on locations, distances, and areas, application of geofencing and guidance of interviewers to the point of interview offline using high-resolution satellite images and built-in GPS receivers.
EUSurvey is an open-source online survey management system developed by the European Union for creating questionnaires and other forms and using them to collect data through the Internet. While its main purpose is to create official surveys of public opinion and forms for internal communication and staff management (for example, staff opinion surveys, evaluation forms, and registration forms), it can support the design of any type of web-based questionnaire. It provides a wide variety of elements used in questionnaires, ranging from the simple (such as text questions and multiple-choice questions) to the advanced (such as editable spreadsheets and multimedia elements).
Google Forms is a free software tool that can support an unlimited number of surveys, each with an unlimited number of respondents. It allows the addition of custom logos, images and videos. It enables simple skip logic and page branching. The survey can be delivered by a link to a website or by e-mail. Survey answers and data are automatically collected in Google Spreadsheets. The tool is appropriate for an NSO with very limited resources wishing to conduct a simple survey.
SurveyMonkey is similar to Google Forms in that it supports any kind of online survey. The free version supports only a very small number of respondents. The paid version has no such limitations.
Comprehensive list of statistical packages (Wikipedia).