Online Surveys

Overview

If you are looking to gather data online in the form of a survey or questionnaire, there are several products available for use with varying levels of difficulty, complexity and control to suit your individual needs.

Google Forms

Google Forms is arguably the easiest survey software to get started with. It is very simplistic and requires no knowledge of HTML. You can create questions on the fly for simple surveys with either known or anonymous responses.

It is available from Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) here.

Information on making forms is available online from Google here.

There is a way to limit responses with Google Forms, and you can review the steps here.

Qualtrics

One campus solution  for online survey products is the Qualtrics application.

Arguably the most advanced survey product available at NC State, Qualtrics is nevertheless fairly intuitive and easy to use. Full support documentation and training tutorials are available on the Qualtrics support site.

NOTE: Before using Qualtrics, you will need to register an account by an email address. You will need to use your NC State email address (i.e., unityID@ncsu.edu) in order to create your account.

SurveyBuilder

A home-grown survey software out of CALS, SurveyBuilder has long been the campus solution to online forms.

It still hosts a robust feature set, anonymous polling, and easy-to-view results. The only downside is that it is arguably the least user-friendly of the three, and offers the fewest options for presentation of your form.

Other Products

While not a campus-supported survey software, many instructors have made use of the Survey Monkey application, which offers free limited use up to a given number of questions and respondents.

Despite its usability, we recommend against the use of Survey Monkey for two reasons:

1. It cannot be used for any form where student replies are expected, as even anonymous student responses are protected under FERPA policy and cannot be sent to an unverified off-campus vendor.
2. Data retention policy at NC State does include the data collected via online forms, so you would be responsible for maintaining a copy of the original form and any results for a minimum of one year’s time.

Since most other free, off-campus survey software must abide by these same restrictions, we recommend whenever possible using one of the three campus-supported survey applications to build your online surveys.

If you have any trouble with any of the survey applications listed above, contact CNR IT for assistance.