Surveys and Market Research communities have their own languages. But like every language there are differences for people from different places. Here are a list of words, phrases and terms that we use and what they mean in the WebSurveyCreator world. Think of this as your your universal translator.
Category or Survey Category
A way of grouping
Surveys together so that you can find them easily. You can create your own categories.
Surveys can only be attached to a single Category.
Choices or Selection Choices
Sometimes
Questions might require the Respondent to make a single selection or multiple selections from a list of known options. These options are known as Choices. For example, in the Question
"Select your favorite Fruit: (A) Apple, (B) Pear, (C) Orange, (D) Banana", the options of Apple, Pear, Orange and Banana are all Choices. Some people may refer to these as Scale Questions, Rating Scales, Rating Questions or Coded Questions.
Choice Linking
A process where you can control what
Choices will show in a Choice based
Question based on the answers to a similar previous Question. For example, You might ask the question
"Which types of Fruit do you eat: (A) Apple, (B) Pineapple, (C) Grape, (D) Pear, (E) Kiwi (F) Orange, (G) Banana" and allow the respondent to make multiple selections. If you then wanted them to choose their favorite fruit it would be important to not show them fruit that they have not selected. That is, if they selected
Apple, Pear, Orange and
Banana it would be preferable to show
"Select your favorite Fruit: (A) Apple, (B) Pear, (C) Orange, (D) Banana". Choice Linking allows you to link the two questions and ensure that the second question only shows items that were selected.
"Come-Back-Later-Code" or Recall Code
In its default setting, if a
Respondent leaves a partially completed survey using an
Anonymous Distribution, their response will be lost and, if they click the link again, they will have to restart their response. You can however set the distribution to allow these Respondents to come back and, using a code, complete their response. This code is called a "Come-Back-Later-Code" or a "Recall Code". You can also, optionally, allow the respondent to Edit their completed response
Data Piping
Data Piping allows you to pass respondent and response
information into survey content.
This makes it possible to personalize the survey, or customize
survey content based upon an individual respondent’s answers.
Distribution
The means or the method of having your
Survey delivered to your
Respondents. This can include
Anonymous Distributions and
Respondent Based Distributions.
Anonymous Distribution
A means of collecting
Responses that ensures you do not know any details about the
Respondents unless you physically ask them
Questions that identify who they are. Anonymous survey responses would normally be completed in a single sitting and if the respondent click the link a subsequent time they would lose their partially completed response nor would they be able to edit their completed response. However, if the Distribution is set to allow
"Come-Back-Later-Codes" they could use that code to come back and complete the response or optionally edit the response.
Respondent Based Distribution or Known Respondent Distribution
A means of collecting
Responses when you have a known list of
Respondents. That is, you have a list of people including some identifiable information such as their Name or Email Address that identifies who they are. In this case each
Respondents will receive a unique link for their response completion process. The link would normally be sent to them via
Survey Email, allowing them to click on the link on their chose device and complete the survey. Because it is a unique link, they can come back and click the link over and over in order to complete the survey. This includes changing devices part way through the survey.
Flow or Survey Flow or Flow Control
A way to control logical pathways that a
Survey will take. Sometimes referred to as Branching or Conditional Branching, Flow Control will allow you to hide
Pages and
Questions for some
Respondents based on their answers to other questions either on the same page or on previous pages.
Group or Question Group or Content Group
A series of
Questions or other content, that you wish to visually appear as if they were 1 single question. This may occur for logical, categorical or simply aesthetic reasons.
Matrix Question
A
Question consisting of a set of Choices and Rows that combine to allow a consistent interface for collecting answers for the same scale for different question text. For example,
"For the following parts of our Hotel choose your level of satisfaction (A) Room, (B) Reception, (C) Pool, (D) Gym, (E) Restaurant". See
Question Rows.
Page
A single part of a
Survey that is attached to a Survey, representing a series of 1 or more similar or related
Questions that are grouped so that they appear on the screen at the same time. For example,
"Demographic Questions".
Portal
From the perspective of WSC, a Web Portal can be thought of as a “view” of some or all of the content
available in the Statistics Overview.
A Web Portal differs from the Statistics Overview in the following ways:
• A Web Portal is accessible to people who are not users of WSC
• The Web Portal theme and layout borrow from the theme and layout you have used for your
Web Survey.
The content in the Statistics Overview is fixed, whereas Web Portal content is configurable.
Question or Content or Survey Content
A single part of a
Survey that is attached to a single Page of a
Survey. Each question or content may consist of a sentence of text asking Respondents to enter information and a series of input fields or other controls allowing the Respondent to complete an answer. For example,
"What is your name?". Questions or Content can also include Images, Text, Video and other elements that convey a message or instructions without requiring input.
Question Rows or Rows
Sometimes Questions might require the Respondent to make a series of Choice selections where the Choices (Rating or Scale) are exactly the same, but the Question Text might change. For example,
"For the following parts of our Hotel choose your level of satisfaction (A) Room, (B) Reception, (C) Pool, (D) Gym, (E) Restaurant". These questions can utilise a Matrix Question. Each Matrix Question consists of 1 or more
Question Rows. Each Question Row is simply 1 of the individual elements from the
Question. For example
"Reception".
Quotas or Survey Quotas or Quota Sampling
A process to ensure you get a balanced sample, and minimize your costs for panel respondents by ensuring you only pay for the people you actually need. For example, you might want to limit your respondents to
100 Male and
100 Female participants.
Survey Quotas will allow you to screen our (Quota Out) participants when one of those Quotas indicates you already have enough participants.
Quota Out
When you have a
Survey Quota and a
Respondent fails to meet the criteria and cannot be included that are said to have "Quota Out" as you already have enough participants. When that process occurs you can
Terminate the
Survey and stop them participating further.
Research Panel
Integration
Respondents for Web Surveys often come from Research
Panels. These panels can be used to find people who fit the
required demographics for the survey.
Web Survey Creator can work generically with any standard
panel.
Response
The result of someone taking a single survey. For any individual Survey you might have many responses. Each response consists of 1 or more answers to individual Questions. See
Draft Response
Draft Response
The result of someone starting a survey response but not yet completing the
Response. Any Response that is completed and then Edited will be reverted to a Draft Response. Draft Responses cannot be viewed nor included on reports until they are completed.
Respondent or Survey Respondent or Participant
The person who is completing the
Survey. This maybe someone
Anonymous or someone who is a
Known Respondent. In the case of
Known Respondents you would normally include, at least, an email address and, optionally, their name and other details.
Screen Out
Sometimes you need to not include people in your final responses based on some criteria. For example, people that are too old. This can be related to
Survey Quotas, but not always. If the respondent fails to meet the criteria and cannot be included you can screen them out. When that process occurs you can
Terminate the
Survey and stop them participating further.
Scripting
Scripting is simply a method of describing survey logic, or manipulating the survey
interface, using an english-like “scripting language”.
Survey
The actual questionnaire that you want to have people complete and get back your results. Each Survey project will consist of 1 or more
Pages and
Questions that make up the design, along with all the data and reports and analytics.
Terminate Page
When you have a
Survey Quota and a
Respondent fails to meet the criteria and cannot be included due to a "Quota Out", you can have the participant Terminate the
Survey and stop them participating further. You do this by changing
Survey Flow and have the participant end on a Terminate Page. This will not allow them to participate further in the Survey.
Text/Choice Recode
the Text/Choice Recoding feature can identify specific phrases or spelling entered by the respondent and then automatically select a choice in a separate question if a matching phrase is found.
Text List
Text lists allow very large non-choice data to be selected via a search facility during the survey process. Text List Options can be enabled for the Single Line Text question type. Text lists can also be extended with "meta data" that can be added to the list.