01/27/07
JSurvey
jSurvey is a system for administering web based surveys. There is a web-based administration
interface for creating or altering surveys and for viewing survey results.
Surveys can contain multiple-choice, range or free-form text questions, and there is support
for both required and optional survey questions.
There is also support for tracking of individual survey respondents or groups of respondents.
Using JSurvey Administrator
The main JSurvey Administer screen shows a list of surveys for which the current user has
edit permission. For each survey, the survey ID, name, count of responses and date created
is shown. Alternating rows are shown in blue.
To access one of the options for managing existing surveys, click on the icon for the
option adjacent to the survey that you would like to manage. The following options are
available for existing surveys:
Change
Use the Change option to alter a survey to which no one has yet responded. If no one
has responded to a survey, an icon will be shown in the “Change” column and the count
of responses shown in the “Response” column will be zero.
Once you click on the Change icon for a survey, the “Add/Edit Survey” screen will be
displayed. This screen looks like the “Add new survey” screen and all information
for the survey, except for the survey name, may be edited here.
Delete
Use the Delete option to delete a survey which is no longer necessary. Surveys to
which users have responded are merely hidden when you click on the delete icon, and
can be restored if you contact support.
Invitations
Invitations are used to control access to the survey. Clicking on the green flag icon
causes the Manage Survey Invitations screen to be displayed. From this screen you can
create new invitations, change the parameters of an existing invitation and view any
surveys logged against an invitation.
Use invitations to:
- Restrict access to a survey to a specific time-frame. Use time-frame restrictions,
for example, to prevent respondants from completing a survey before a specified date or
after a specified date.
- Disallow re-use. Use this feature to prevent respondants from completing multiple
surveys (in this case, a unique invitation code would be given to each respondant).
- Invitations can also be used to group respondants by date. Use this feature, for
example, to administer quarterly employee satisfaction surveys. Then use the invitation
codes for each quarter to measure whether employee satisfaction is getting better or
worse.
View
Use the View option to view the results of a survey. This option makes available
aggregate data in the form of bar-charts. A link to the individual survey responses
is also available via this option.
Once you click on the View icon for a survey, the “View Aggregate Survey Results”
screen appears.
The “View Aggregate Survey Results” screen is divided into three sections.
The topmost section shows total responses to your survey and shows a bar
graph of survey responses received versus day of week.
The middle block shows general settings for your survey, including the name
of the survey, how often you have allowed users to take it, the welcome and
thank you text shown users at the beginning and end of the survey, and finally
a link to the “View Individual Responses” screen.
To view individual surveys, click on the “View Individual Responses” link.
The “View Survey Responses” screen is shown, listing each survey response received,
along with the time and date it was received. Click on the hyper linked survey
id to see how a particular user responded to your survey.
The last block shows response information for each question in your survey.
For multiple choice questions, a graph is displayed showing how many users chose
each survey answer. For free-form text questions, a list of distinct responses
is shown, and for range-type questions, a graph of the average response to
each question is shown.
Survey Preview
Use the Survey option to preview your survey in action. Clicking on this option
causes the current survey to be displayed.
Adding New Surveys
The “Add new Survey” icon is located below the list of surveys on
the “Add/View/Edit Surveys” screen.
Clicking on the “Add new Survey” icon causes the “Add/Edit Survey” screen to
be displayed. From this screen, options that apply to the survey as a whole
(not individual questions) are controlled.
The “Add/Edit Survey” screen has these fields:
Survey Name. Each survey must be assigned a name, and the name must be
unique. If a survey already exists with the name that you have assigned to
your survey you will be prompted to choose another name.
Once you have saved your survey, you may not change its name. The only
way to rename an existing survey is to copy it. For more information on
copying existing surveys, see the “Copying Existing Surveys” section
later in this document.
Survey Frequency. How often should users be allowed to repeat this
survey? The survey application stores a unique user id on each user’s
computer, in the form of a cookie. You can restrict how often the survey
is taken from that computer using this option.
Choose “As often as they like” if you do not wish to have any restriction
on how often users can take your survey, or “Never” if you would like them
to be able to take your survey only once. Other options are “once per day”,
“once per week”, and “once per month”.
Welcome text. The welcome text entered here is displayed on the very
first page of your survey and should explain to users the purpose of the survey.
Thank you text. The thank you text entered here is displayed once
users have completed your survey.
When you have made entries in all of the fields on the “Add/Edit
Survey” screen, click on the “Create Survey” button to create the survey.
Once you’ve saved your survey, the “Create Survey” button disappears and
two new buttons, “Update Survey Settings” and “Add Question” take its place.
Use the “Update Survey Settings” to save changes that you make to the
“Add/Edit Survey” fields.
Adding new questions
After you have created the survey, you can add questions to it. To add a
new question to an existing survey, click on the “Add Question” button.
When you click on the “Add Question” button, you’ll be taken to the
“Add/Edit Survey Question” screen. On this screen are the following fields:
Question Text. This is the text of the question that will be displayed
on the survey form.
Question Type. Currently, three types of questions are supported. They are:
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Multiple choice
Multiple choice questions display several possible answers for the user,
who must choose among them. You can choose to allow only one answer to a
multiple choice question or several, and you can require an answer or make
a response optional.
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Range
Range questions display several answers for the user, who must then rank
them. Like multiple choice, range type questions can be optional or mandatory,
and can allow only one or serveral choices per answer.
Range questions also require you to provide range titles. These are the
column headers that appear above each column in the range, for example
"strongly disagree" to "strongly agree", or "least likely" to "most likely".
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Text
Text questions allow the user to enter free-form text up to a limit of
2,000 characters. Like multiple choice or range questions, text questions
can be either optional or mandatory.
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Once you have entered your questions, you can use the range order icons
to arrange your questions in the desired sequence. To leave the edit question
screen, click on the “Save Question Info” button to return to the edit
survey screen.
When you’ve created your question, the “Save Question Info” button
disappears and is replaced by an “Update Question Info” button and,
below it, an “Add New Answer” button.
Use the “Update Question Info” to change the values of any of
the question fields.
Editing existing questions
Existing questions for a survey are shown on the “Add/Edit Survey”
screen, below the “Update Survey Settings” button.
Each question currently assigned to a survey is shown, along with its
sort order number. The type of the question is shown adjacent to the
text of the question, using the following abbreviations:
- (RG) for Range
- (MC) for Multiple Choice
- (TX) for Text
If an answer to the question is required, then an asterisk (*) is
shown to the left of the text of the question.
Below each range or multple choice question are listed the answers
assigned to the question. Each answer is preceded by “>>” to
distinguish answers from questions.
To edit a question, click on the icon in the “Change” column in
the same row as the question, or to delete a question, click on
the on the icon in the “Delete” column.
Adding answers
For multiple choice and range-type questions, click on the
“Add New Answer” button to add new answer options to the question.
Clicking on the button will cause the “Add/Edit Answer To
Survey Question” screen to appear.
This screen contains two fields. The first is the text of the
answer that will be displayed to the user on the survey. The
second is a number that controls the order in which answers are
displayed. Answers with lower numbers are displayed first, at
the top of the list of answers, and answers with higher numbers
are displayed later, toward the bottom of the list.
There are two buttons on the screen, “Save Answer Info” and
“Add New Answer”. Both buttons cause the current answer to be saved.
In addition, the “Add New Answer” button clears the fields in
preparation to add another answer.
Editing existing answers
Any existing answers for the current survey question are displayed
on the “Add/Edit Answer to Survey Question” screen, beneath the
“Update Answer Info” button. Click on the icon in the “Change”
column to edit the text of an existing answer, or on the icon in
the “Delete” column to delete the answer.
You may also edit answers from the “Add/Edit Survey Question” screen.
Copying Existing Surveys
The “Copy existing Survey” icon is located below the list of
surveys on the “Add/View/Edit Surveys” screen.
Clicking on the “Copy existing Survey” icon causes the
“Copy existing Survey” screen to be displayed. On this screen
you can see all surveys listed.
To copy a survey, select the radio button adjacent to the survey
you would like to copy. Eenter the name that you would like to use for
the new, copied, survey in the “Name to use for copy” field at the
bottom of the screen then click on the “Make Copy” button to create
a new copy of the survey using that name.