Surveys have been used as a research tool for decades. Many industries consider survey data collection indispensable — most notably in marketing, advertising, and sociology. Ability to produce comprehensive and accurate survey forms is essential to many business operations. Modern survey technology provides market researchers with unprecedented access to the target audience. Most notable recent advances in survey data collection have been attributed to extremely high penetration of the web and mobile data access throughout the world. Today, online surveys account for the vast majority of surveys conducted. In general, online surveys are simpler, faster, and cheaper than the alternatives. Among other valuable benefits, online surveys can also provide real time access to the survey data.
Yet, challenges remain.
Aside from applying survey methodology and designing survey questionnaires, the most difficult task facing the survey administrator is the creation of the survey form itself. Even with all the recent advances made by the industry leading survey form makers, the survey form creation process is still far from being straightforward.
Let us explain why.
Consider the typical life cycle of a survey. Starting up as a market research idea, it quickly takes form of survey requirements — on paper, or maybe even a blackboard in the past — but now most commonly in a form of a Word or Googledocs text document. This requirements document may outline the idea and assumptions behind the survey, but it also serves as a basis for the survey questionnaire. At some point the researcher working on the survey will produce the document that has the exact list of questions comprising the survey. Specific order of the questions in the survey, as well as questions types (single choice vs. multiple choice answers, ratings, Likert scales, open-ended questions, etc.) — all of this is clearly defined in the survey specification document.
However, when the time comes for the actual online survey form to be created, the author has to start from scratch. All the hard work that has been done up to this point is only a draft, nothing else. Even with the leading survey creation software, survey form creation will involve a lot of manual work. The survey form will have to be created field-by-field, usually in an online graphical form editor. Dragging the question fields around the survey form and then configuring these fields one-by-one takes time.
There should be a better way.
What if there was a way to take a survey specifications document and create the survey form from it automatically?
Fortunately, there is a way.
With Payformix patent-pending technology, you can bypass all the manual work involved in defining every single question field in the survey form. Instead, you can generate the entire survey form directly from your survey specifications. Directly from your text document. Automatically.
Check out this demo to see how a short online survey form can be created in just 47 seconds (not a video, actual live survey form builder doing the work in real time). Then, you can play with the survey form here.
The survey form can be edited and saved as a simple text document. Making changes to the survey form is very easy — as easy as editing a text document. For the first time you will be able to easily combine several surveys together, or merge surveys — all in your favorite text editor. There is no need to go back and forth between the survey specifications and the actual survey form trying to keep track of the changes — the survey specifications and the survey form are now one and the same. Just one text document.
It is very convenient.
Besides, online surveys are first and foremost online forms. And Payformix makes very good online forms — fast, secure, and optimized for mobile.
We would like to encourage you to give Payformix a try — you may find your online survey forms to be much easier to work with.
See the demo — get started with online survey forms — absolutely free.