Tools for Online Research

[Ray Poynter]

Tell us all about the tools you find useful for online research, but posting a reply.

[Ray Poynter]

One my favourites at the moment for simple polls in forums and blogs is Polldaddy.

Click here to see an example of one of their polls.

[Toni Gril]

One of best free survey tools i came across is Lime Survey.
http://www.limesurvey.org/index.php
It has a lot of features and it is easy to use. So if you can't afford or simply want an open source solution for your online research, this would be my first choice.

[Paul Alford]

Toni is spot on with his call for LimeSurvey.

I'm actually involved in the development of v2 (functionality) which is due out as a beta sometime in July. Expect to see some exciting additions to an already excellent offering. All new admin interface, complete re-write of the base code and lots of new question types, visual design and interactive tools.

LimeSurvey 1.7 is a big step forward in the current release base. It is easy to use, but I wouldn't suggest running it on a shared hosting platform. At the very least a managed virtual server. Better is a root server. A little PHP, CSS and MySQL knowledge gets you a long way too. The development team are really approachable and always welcome new ideas for added functionality and will wherever possible try to implement solid ideas and requests, though that has slowed a little as they come to the end of the 1.x series and are full-steam ahead with developing v2. Pop along to the website Toni has posted and take a look. All ideas for v2 will be welcomed.

Outputs to SPSS and Excel work like a dream so no worries with analysis. It does lack a little of the functionality of some of the bigger players in the market, but it is open source and free. I would say it can easily handle 90% of the web surveys we administer for our clients.

If you do end up using it can I ask that you consider donating to the development fund. As a company we decided to donate each time we use it on a project. A small price to pay for software that YOU can actually influence.

If anyone has any questions about LS, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

Cheers
Paul

[Ray Poynter]

Thanks Paul and Toni, I looked at Lime a few months ago but was put off by the intalling process, I did not feel my PHP/SQL were up to it. Perhaps I should have tried harder, or perhaps commissioned somebody else to do the set up for me, so that I could take it from there. If there are a few people on MR Space who are interested in LS, perhaps one of you could set up a group (see the tabs along the top). This might be a chance for users/fans to talk to each other, but also a place for the timid to go for advice?

[Paul Alford]

Happy to do that Ray. In fact I'll set one up.

As a starter, you need to following:

An FTP client
A web server with the following software installed:
Apache
PHP v4.4.7 minimum
MySQL v5.1

The downside at present is that you need to create a MySQL database and database administrator manually, but if you have a good web server package there will be a control panel to administer this and then it is simply a series of mouse clicks. Once done you need to add the db name, user and password to the Limesurvey config file and then upload the lot to your web server via the FTP client.

That's pretty much it.

[Richard Shaw]

Limesurvey looks good, I wish I had known about this 18 months ago when I worked for myself.

[Sam Winstanley]

I'm a big fan of SPSS Dimensions (mrInterview & Reporter particularly), its extremely flexible and powerful. The learning curve to get the best out of it is tougher than some systems, but thats improving very rapidly now with the arrival of Desktop Reporter and Desktop Author tool which is very easy to use and aimed at the researcher rather than a technical scriptwriter.

It really succeeds in 3 areas its got the high level ease of use in terms of authoring, the mid level scripting capabilities that allow it to handle the most complex of scenarios and the low level components that make it ideal for producing custom research products (whether surveying products or deliverables like portal integration etc.).

SPSS built the components first (starting in about 1999), these tackled a lot of integration issues but weren't really tangible to any but the most technical agencies as a result in early releases Dimensions failed to shine.

Now the technical underpinnings of the platform are there the rate of development is accellerating rapidly, given that SPSS as a business is doing very well in terms of its own growth this can only mean that Dimensions is going to be a very tough product to beat in the mid/high-end tools market over the next few years.

As a disclaimer, I worked on the development team for this product for a lot of years you could say I have sentimental bias. However I'm independent of SPSS now, I work with lots of med/large agencies and I've seen nearly everything on the market, although in pockets of specialized functionality the SPSS technology is beaten I don't think there's an end-to-end equivelent that's as capable.

I'm all for the free stuff too. I've looked at Lime Survey and its definately got good stuff going on and I intend to look in more detail at it when I get a few spare cycles. I do try to avoid the pure Polling systems because I worry they actively devalue MR but thats a whole other story....

[Paul Alford]

I agree with a lot you have said there Sam, but the biggest drawback for smaller companies is the on-going cost of SPSS.

I also don't like their buy it up and dissolve it attitude to gain market share. One particular product I'm thinking of here is Surveycraft, quite possibly the best ever CATI/Data Analysis tool the MR industry has had. Licensing fees went through the roof when they bought the company and now it has disappeared, though thankfully those companies who were using the software at takeover still have access to it. I also get the feeling that SPSS cares more about Enterprise Marketing and Sales functionality than they do about Market Research, but I may be wrong.

For me, SPSS is a useful piece of middle-ware to get data from one package into another. I would use it for stats, but we outsource all that work to one of our partner companies.

As for looking at LS, I'd wait until v2 hits the streets if you don't have an immediate need. I think it is going to be a fabulous piece of software. If you do need to get surveys into field soon, then v1.73RC2 is very stable (in fact I heard yesterday v1.73 Final is probably out this week). Keeping current via the SVN is also a good idea.

[Sam Winstanley]

There's no question that SPSS is a commercial company that aims to make money by selling software, it's owned by shareholders (who want to make money) and that does mean that it has to behave a certain way. Small companies doing fairly commoditised types of research might find it hard to justify the investment required to get started. My own experience is that Dimensions is more popular with larger MR companies, social/government research, Management consultancies and with commercial in-house work (what is often termed Enterprise feedback management or voice of the customer).

In general there's really a great opportunity for a free tool, not just in the low end of the market but in general with online work. The price crunch for fieldwork gives it business justification but also its something to innovate and hopefully it will open the door to interesting/organic features that commercial vendors wouldn't usually think of.

[Paul Alford]

"its something to innovate and hopefully it will open the door to interesting/organic features that commercial vendors wouldn't usually think of".

Spot on. That was why Surveycraft became such a powerful tool. You needed a solution to a particular problem, they wrote it.

[Richard Shaw]

I haven't had chance to play any new/interesting online tools recently, I've been busy doing more standard stuff.

However a few months ago I was playing with Dapper - http://www.dapper.net/ I think it has a lot of potential to extract some interesting naturally occurring data.

PX Lab is interesting - (http://www.uni-mannheim.de/fakul/psycho/irtel/pxlab/index.html) - It's not the most usable but of kit but is allows you to time participants responses relatively accurately which can be very interesting when researching certain topics. We don't often consider time in MR and how it effects our results and conclusions. It's probably something I should write an article on......

I know that I could use Google Maps to do something interesting but just not sure what yet and infact I'm sure there's a whole host of interesting things we could be doing with the web services provided by all these web 2.0 companies.

[Page Schorer]

Although i have been working (off & on) in the area of respondent operated computer interviewing since the early 1980s, online i have only used our proprietary system. I like it because when i think i need something, i can get it.

I am, however, interested in systems which include hosting.