Want to Conduct a Survey?
Institutional Research is the lead unit for coordinating survey administration. We can help you with survey development, troubleshooting, distributing, and data visualization and analysis.
U of I has a license for , a powerful survey instrument. Qualtrics is a robust online survey-building tool that is simple and easy to customize for a wide variety of uses. Current 幸运快三 employees and students can use this tool free of charge. It is not difficult to learn. Below you will find links to resources that will help you navigate Qualtrics and the entire survey-building process.
There are several people on campus with experience with Qualtrics. One of them is KarlaRose Erhard-Hudson, Institutional Research’s Qualtrics specialist. You can contact her at karlarose@uidaho.edu.
Help us help you!
Before contacting Institutional Research, we recommend that you read the information on Before Starting Your Survey.
Posting Surveys and Forms on U of I’s Website
Would you like to embed a form or survey on uidaho.edu? The university’s web team uses Qualtrics to build and maintain web forms in support of university operations. Please note the web team does not support forms used in research or scholarly activities. Nor does the web team build or maintain forms not embedded on uidaho.edu.
For more information about how the web team can help you, please contact us or submit a request if you are ready to get started. Also, you may review the web team’s Qualtrics standard for additional information.
Qualtrics Resources
For Qualtrics information, try searching through the links listed on the left. For even more help, see the resources listed below.
As previously mentioned, you can also contact the Institutional Research Qualtrics’ primary survey developer, KarlaRose Erhard-Hudson at karlarose@uidaho.edu. She is a part-time employee working remotely, so she may not get back to you right away but will respond as soon as possible.
- There are also many other useful videos in the . It’s worth exploring!
- Qualtrics information from other institutions:
NOTE: links to Qualtrics web pages may require logging in via U of I SSO, which is U幸运快三.
General Survey Resources
Other Resources
Surveying: Start to Finish
There are a few things to consider before you even begin writing your survey:
- First, make sure you know what you intend to accomplish with the survey and that your working group is clear and in agreement. In other words, it is important to have a well-defined purpose for your survey.
- With this purpose in mind, identify the population you want to survey. Please note that under current U of I email policies the ability to send emails to large portions of the U of I community is granted to a limited number of managers who are responsible for email lists. Institutional Research can help you obtain permission to email your survey to these lists. However, you might also consider using a representative sample, rather than surveying all U of I students, for example.
- Consider how your respondents will be receiving your survey, and what device or devices will they likely be using to complete it. Institutional Research recommends you become familiar with the devices used by your survey population and design the survey to accommodate them. Qualtrics can easily format the survey to display on phones as well as computers, for example.
- Do you want to capture information about your respondents, such as name and 幸运快三 number (Vandal number)? Or do you want to keep survey responses confidential? Both options are available, but you must decide which is needed.
Once you have a plan for your survey, it is time to start thinking about structuring the survey.
Recommended Reading
Keep Your Survey Short
Research consistently indicates that the longer a survey is, the more likely it is that recipients will not take the survey, or, if they start it, will not complete the survey.
The ideal is that respondents should be able to complete the survey in 10 minutes or less.
If it is necessary to make the survey longer, you need to make sure that your potential respondents are highly motivated to complete the survey. You might also see the information we’ve compiled on Improving Response Rates.
Test Your Survey
It’s recommended that you have at least five people take your survey to test it before you send it out. This way, you can hopefully catch errors and get feedback on whether it is understandable and simple to fill out.
Best Practices to Structure Your Survey
- Start the survey with an easy, and if possible, fun question. You want to draw your respondents into the survey, rather than putting them off by asking difficult and/or sensitive questions right off the bat.
- Place sensitive and difficult questions toward the end of the survey, rather than at the beginning. This includes demographic questions about gender, ethnicity, and so forth.
- Also, only ask these demographic questions if they are relevant. Otherwise, omit them.
- Limit the number of questions per page. Consider placing as few as one question per page. In this way, respondents don’t feel daunted by seeing a long page filled with questions.
- Place open-ended (text response) questions near the end of the survey. The advantage of this is that, even if some respondents choose not to answer these questions, there will still be responses from them for the earlier questions.
- Be aware that question order matters. Qualtrics recommends randomizing some or all question order if possible; .
- Add a progress bar. Although not universally recommended, progress bars help respondents see how they are progressing through the survey. Be aware, however, that if your survey contains branching logic, the progress bar may not show progress correctly, so you should probably omit it in that case.
Recommended Reading
Here are some of the most common tips found in survey question-writing advice:
- Limit the number of open-ended text questions. These are taxing for respondents and difficult to process when results are analyzed. They can be valuable when used properly, however. Recommended viewing: Qualtrics video re: text answers:
- Avoid using Matrix questions. These are also taxing for respondents. In addition, they are not mobile-friendly, a consideration when targeting surveys to students.
- Avoid asking more than one question at once. An example would be: “Customer service is responsive and helpful.” It is entirely p