Key Features of Online Survey Tools

The potential feature list for survey tools is quite extensive.  Many of these may be unimportant to you.  But many may be important to you — and you won’t know it until you create a survey and find out the survey tool you selected doesn’t support certain features.  Or they may become more important as you become more sophisticated in your survey practices.  All the survey tools will support the basic features.  

Comprehensiveness of Survey Question Types.  Look at the survey question types supported.  (Note: the survey software tools may use different names for these question types.)  All will support multiple choice, interval rating, and open-ended comment boxes.  But are there limits on the number of points on interval scales?  How large a text buffer can you have for comment boxes?  

You may also want to use semantic differential, forced ranking, or fixed sum survey question types.  Are these available?  Does the tool provide a running sum as the respondent completes the fixed sum question?

Advanced users may want to randomize the question order to control for question sequencing interaction, randomize the order of the answers within a question, reverse code selected questions, or control the number of responses in a multiple choice question a respondent can select.  

Design Flexibility.  Can you customize the formatting of the output that the respondent sees?  Shading of alternate questions is a nice feature.  Can you add a logo and custom HTML?  Can you require an answer for selected questions only?  Does the vendor force you to have their “ad” at the bottom of the screen?  

If you’re setting up a matrix or table for a series of interval rating questions, can you control the width of the table with the radio button response options?  If you are putting anchors — those words that describe the scale — only over the endpoints of the scale, can you control the distance between response options?  This is vital to maintaining some semblance of interval properties to the question.  

Conditional branching is a very useful feature to pass respondents by a series of questions that are not applicable.  Is this supported? Can you loop through a series of questions for multiple occurrences of some event, for example, feedback on a number of different classes taken?  Is text piping supported in the looping?  

Frequently, we want to branch based upon the response a person gives.  For example, for a low score we may want to branch to an open-ended comment box.  Is this supported?

Progress indicators are a nice feature as is the option for respondents to postpone completing the survey should they get interrupted — saving the previous responses of course.  How simple is it to add section headers or other descriptive text that is not part of a question?  Upon completion of the survey, can you redirect the respondent to a specific web page?  

Ease of Use.  How easy is it to create a question or apply a scale to a series of questions?  Can you create your own library of questions or scale types that you can readily call upon for future surveys?  

Respondent Friendliness.  Check for the experience of the respondent.  If the respondent makes an error in entering an answer — a particular problem with forced ranking and fixed sum question types – what are the error messages?  I’ve seen some tools that scold the respondent.  Not good for response rates!  Does the system support halo text or some other means of providing further explanation of a survey question?

Integration with Transactional System.  If you’re performing event or transactional surveys, does the system integrate with your transaction system to provide a seamless transfer of contract information?  Are there administrative controls to control for repeated surveying of an individual?  

Administration Support.  Will the survey tool create a random sample from a list of contacts?  A stratified random sample?  Will it tell you an approximate sample size you need for a certain level of statistical accuracy?  Can you restrict access to the survey only to those to whom you’ve sent an invitation?  Can you send out reminders to those who have not completed the survey?

As you can see, the capabilities of survey software tools can be quite extensive – and the above is not even a comprehensive list!  Do your homework and think about your true needs.