In search of the perfect pen
By : Yuandra Ismiraldi
Let’s say you’re a researcher with a burning desire to do research on finding the perfect pen for your daily needs. Your first step would be asking people what features they’d want in a perfect pen and you’d want to ask as many people as possible. Best way to do that?
Use a survey tool !
Using a web survey tool such as Google Forms, alows you to create, distribute, store, and analyse a web based survey. What is a web survey tool ? A survey that everyone with access to the internet can access and open via their browser app. It’s a really handy way of distributing surveys to various groups, either targeted or not. Just send the link, and voila!
The Awesome Pen’ survey results
What is Google Forms ? Google Forms is a service that allows you to easily create surveys that you can distribute to people through a web address. Furthermore, it puts the survey data into a spreadsheet which you can share for collaborating, or extend to analyse / visualise the data. Best part ? It’s free to use, and the limit of the number of question / number of respondents is affected by the size of the spreadsheet (2 million rows - enough to store 500.000 respondent with 4 question each).
After reaching your 500.000 respondent with your 4 question survey, you might realise that you want more data. You actually want to go out and catalog the various pens people have. You want to grab a picture of the pen you found, take notes of its shape, and maybe get the location so that you’ll remember where you found it. It would be hard to do that with a web based form, so what you should use ?
Use another survey tool, of course !
Mobile data collection in action
Kobo Toolbox is a web + mobile data collection tool. Meaning, the app is geared to get things like location data, audio, and video using your mobile phone. The difference with Google Form is that Kobo Toolbox is more mobile focused, providing a mobile survey app that you can download and use to get your form. It also allows you to fill the form without internet connection and will only send the data when there’s internet. The best part ? It is free to use - and since you can put it on your own server, the limitation will be on your server resources.
I can see the location of the perfect pen.
Ah, here it is !
So, interested in learning more about survey tools ?
Join our free Survey Tool for Beginner Training using Google Forms and Kobo Toolbox !
The training will be done 28-29 September 2015, 1pm-4pm, in the Research Platforms Services Meeting Room, Doug Mcdonell Building - Level 3, University of Melbourne Markville Campus.
Register here (please note that we only have limited number of places available) :
https://resbaz-survey-tools-beginners-alpha.eventbrite.com.au
