The electronic survey has become a tool used in social studies but also the tool used in supporting analysis of numerous areas of economic entities’ operations. The rules of creation and conducting tests using questionnaires or surveys are profoundly described in literature; it needs to be noticed that the tools for creating electronic surveys on the Internet are subject to constant changes. For this reason, the purpose of the hereby article is an analysis of the methods and tools used for creating elec-tronic surveys, taking into special consideration e-services functioning in Poland.
Keywords: e-services, electronic surveys, software, questionnaire tools, decision-making
Introduction
A wide variety of electronic surveys can be found on the Internet. Some of them are created to examine users’ opinions concerning a given product. Participation in them is usually voluntary and, in some cases, the survey participants are rewarded for their contribution [10]. The electronic survey has become not only a research tool used in social studies but it is also widely used by companies e.g. for strengthening relationships with customers and assessing their engagement, conducting mar-ket research or controlling employee satisfaction [19]. As Evans and Mathur note, online surveys can be applied in both business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) settings, and among their main advantages they list flexibility, convenience and ease of data entry and analysis [3]. While there are also some potential problems associated with electronic questionnaires, such as sampling bias, low response rate or privacy issues [7] and the fact that they will never completely replace other methods [25], with the population of Internet users steadily growing, online surveys are playing a much more important role in companies' repertoire of tools for information collection. After all, the proper system of environment observation that provides new, current and essential information is crucial in every organization [8, 192–199]. Even though electronic questionnaires are already widely used in research and the rules of creation and conducting tests using questionnaires or surveys are profoundly described in the literature [1, 284–298] [2, 4], it needs to be noticed that the tools for creating electronic surveys on the Internet are the subject to constant change. For this reason, the purpose of the hereby article is an analysis of the methods and tools used for creating electronic surveys.
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1. Methods of creating electronic surveys
In order to conduct survey tests using the Internet we need a proper method and tools for con-structing an electronic survey. There are three basic models of creating e-questionnaires to choose from [26]:
• from scratch, such as a database service, using software for designing websites; • using ready scripts for constructing electronic surveys;
• using e-services offering the construction of electronic surveys. 2. Constructing an electronic survey from scratch as a database service
Designing an electronic survey from scratch as a database service resembles that of creating a website. The basic elements for creating Internet forms on a WWW are also used in creating elec-tronic surveys. For this reason, what is essential – apart from the survey concept itself – is selection of proper tool and technology in which the website will be created. A wide variety of website creat-ing technologies is available [9]. Apart from the general division into: Content Management, Server-side Languages, Client-Server-side Languages, JavaScript Libraries, Markup Languages [24], numerous IT companies [14, 16] mention specific popular names of particular technologies, e.g.: XHTML, PHP, ASP.NET, JAVA, JavaScript, CSS, Flash, MySQL, Ajax, JQuery.
The development of technologies and software languages resulted in development of applica-tions supporting website creation. There is a wide range of free and payable programs at our disposal. Taking into consideration payable programs, attention should be paid to the following software [21]: Incomedia WebSite X5 Evolution 9, Adobe Dreamweaver CS6, Pablo Software WYSIWYG Web Builder 8 and Cream Software Pajczek 5 NxG Professional. It is hard to make a firm decision as to which one is best for creating electronic surveys. It depends on the needs of the given web developer. It seems that the most intuitive one is Adobe Dreamweaver CS6, which also works with Polish. Unfortunately, its price is highest of the aforementioned programs and costs about 1500 PLN [18].
When it comes to the free tools, the ones that deserve special attention are: Aptana Studio, CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor, JTHTML, SharePoint Designer [11]. Despite numerous rankings of software for designing websites available on the Internet, the choice is not easy.
Even when using the most advanced program, making one’s own survey in the form of a data-base website is a time-consuming task and requires knowledge about website creation [26]. The higher the expectations the survey should meet, the greater amount of time is required to make the survey and the more challenging it gets. If we want to prepare a simple survey with a couple of points, basic knowledge of HTML and e.g. PHP language and MySQL are sufficient. However, if we want to prepare a professional electronic survey with data validation (checking the correctness of the entered data), logging, the possibility to preview the results, conditional questions (filtrating) etc., using other programming languages becomes inevitable (e.g.: JavaScript). The whole task be-comes far more complicated then and the aid of a more experienced programmer bebe-comes indispen-sable. This solution has one major advantage, though. In the end we receive precisely the function-ality we wanted. For this reason, many companies and institutions still create their own electronic surveys, constructing them from scratch as database services using software for creating websites.
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4. Constructing an electronic survey using ready scripts
In this method electronic surveys are built using ready payable or free-of-charge scripts that can be used for constructing our own electronic survey. Knowledge of the programming language is not necessary. Basic knowledge in the field of script installation on Internet servers is enough. An issue with using this method is the problem of the selecting appropriate tool (script). A great number of scripts is available [22], with various levels of complexity that can be used free of charge or that are payable. We can fall back on the opinions of other Internet users [12] (fig. 1) concerning given scripts, but a detailed script analysis in relation to one’s own needs should be carried out.
Fig. 1 Free scripts from HotScripts.com service Source: [6].
When selecting the script, special attention should be paid to encrypting Polish marks and the translation of reports into Polish. Most of the offered scripts do not operate with Polish at all, while problems with the specifics of Polish (i.e. only part of the report if correctly translated, while the remaining reports are in English) and encrypting Polish marks (fig. 2).
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Fig. 2. Incorrectly displayed and saved Polish marks in survey results in phpESP script Source: Author’s own work.
The functionality of some free scripts is very well developed but they are not still well adjusted to one’s own non-standard solutions, often inevitable in more advanced surveys. The attempt at adjusting the free script to one’s own needs (e.g. adding new advanced functions) is possible but often very complicated. It requires very good programming knowledge and precise modification of the script’s source code. In case of payable software we need to use the particular functionality that is inscribed into it.
After an initial analysis of a couple dozen popular free scripts for creating electronic surveys, it was decided that emphasis should be put on Limesurvey script [13]. This script is well assessed both in HotScripts.com service (score 4,31/5) [5] and in the package of popular scripts to be used, namely Softaculous [20] (score 4,57/5) (fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Softaculous package – evaluation in LimeSurvey Source: [23].
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After installation on the Author’s own server, all of the basic elements of the application, cre-ating an electronic survey, were subject to analysis (fig. 4).
Fig. 4. Electronic survey created in LimeSurvey on the Author’s own server Source: Author’s own work.
The installation and configuration of the LimeSurvey script, as well as the survey construction are not complicated. It requires virtually no advanced programming knowledge, just the knowledge on how to install scripts on a server. Both the survey and the questions themselves are created in an easy way, while the script’s functionality is very high. Having familiarized oneself with the script’s user manual, any number of one’s own electronic surveys can be created. The only problem is the necessity to buy or have one’s own server with database access that will support the script.
4. Constructing an electronic survey using e-services
Creating an electronic survey using Internet services that offer such e-services does not require the knowledge of programming methods or the installation of scripts on a server. It only requires the introduction of questions and answers into an existing template and thus making the created ques-tionnaire available online on the service provider’s server. Unfortunately, the quality of these Inter-net services varies. For this reason, just as in the previous two cases, we decided to take a look at the most popular of such services and choose one to be subjected to a detailed analysis.
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In the case of Internet services offering e-services connected with creating electronic surveys, one trustworthy ranking is hard to find. It was therefore decided that an initial analysis in the form of an evaluation of popular Internet services offering the creation of electronic surveys would be carried out. The following criteria were applied:
• data safety (company credibility), • costs (free-of-charge),
• service popularity (PageRank, AlexaRank indexes, as well as their changes over time), • language version (Polish).
It was assumed that all services that had been taken into consideration had to make it possible to create surveys in Polish and offer free accounts. The data collected on October 9, 2012, May 4, 2013 and March 24, 2014 are presented in Tables 1, 2 and 3.
Table 1. Comparison of selected services in Poland that make creation of e-surveys possible Ref.
No Website address Credibility PageRank AlexaRank
1 moje-ankiety.pl Private company 5/10 288,304
2 ankiety-online.pl No information on the owner 3/10 3,525,790
3 ankieter.pl Private company 4/10 1,735,261
4 ankietka.pl Private company 5/10 198,302
5 webankieta.pl Limited liability company 4/10 381,641
6 net-ankiety.pl Private company 3/10 7,405,186
7 e-ankieta.org No information on the owner 2/10 3,418,093
8 wbadanie.pl No information on the owner 4/10 7,545,777
9 formularze.eu Private company 2/10 4,860,318
Source: Author’s own work (status as of 04.05.2013).
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Table 2. Comparison PageRank of selected services in Poland
Pos. Service PageRank
Date: 09.10.2012r PageRank Date: 05.05.2013r PageRank Date: 24.03.2014r 1 moje-ankiety.pl 5/10 5/10 5/10 2 ankietka.pl 5/10 5/10 4/10 3 webankieta.pl 4/10 4/10 4/10 4 ankieter.pl 4/10 4/10 3/10 4 wbadanie.pl 4/10 4/10 3/10 5 ankiety-online.pl 3/10 3/10 3/10 6 net-ankiety.pl 3/10 3/10 2/10 7 e-ankieta.org 2/10 2/10 2/10 7 formularze.eu 2/10 2/10 2/10
Source: Author’s own work (status as of 24.03.2014).
Table 3. Comparison AlexaRank of selected services in Poland (lower score is better)
Pos. Service AlexaRank
Date: 09.10.2012r AlexaRank Date: 4.05.2013r AlexaRank Date: 24.03.2014r 1 ankietka.pl 181,192 198,302 211,811 2 moje-ankiety.pl 260,835 288,304 250,464 3 webankieta.pl 263,719 381,641 585,400 4 net-ankiety.pl 2,798,756 7,405,186 2,040,809 5 ankiety-online.pl 3,345,110 3,525,790 2,464,743 6 ankieter.pl 1,198,109 1,735,261 3,319,339 7 formularze.eu 2,476,484 4,860,318 6,193,611 8 wbadanie.pl 5,595,812 7,545,777 11,260,041 9 e-ankieta.org 4,543,633 3,418,093 20,113,482
Source: Author’s own work (status as of 24.03.2014).
The above comparison of services that offer the creation of e-questionnaires shows that three of them stand out against the others in terms of PageRank and AlexaRank indexes.
These are:
• moje-ankiety.pl (fig. 5) • ankietka.pl (fig. 6) • webankieta.pl (fig. 6)
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Fig. 5. Service moje-ankiety.pl Source: http://www.moje-ankiety.pl (access date: 30.03.2014).
Fig. 6. Services webankieta.pl and ankietka.pl
Source: http://www. webankieta.pl, http://www. ankietka.pl (access date: 30.03.2014).
By analyzing the moje-ankiety.pl, ankietka.pl and webankieta.pl services, it may be observed that they offer both payable and free accounts that make it possible to create electronic surveys (table 4).
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Table 4. The price list of services offering creation of electronic surveys
Service Service name and price
moje-ankiety.pl Standard account (free) – 0/month Plus account – 34.99/month Premium account – 74.99/month
Premium account – 44.99/month (annual subscription)
ankietka.pl Standard account (free) –0/month
Premium account – 39 PLN/month Business account– 99 PLN/month Enterprise account – 299 PLN//month webankieta.pl Free account (free-of-charge) – 0/month
Professional account – 99 PLN/month Source: Author’s own work (status as of 04.05.2013 and 24.03.2014).
In September 2013 the owners of the site ankietka.pl bought the company webankieta.pl but did not change the offer [17]. Surveys for one’s own needs can be created in the free accounts of services enumerated in Table 4 but unfortunately there are many functionality limitations connected with them, i.e.:
• limited number of question types (e.g. 15),
• limited number of questions in a survey (e.g. max 10), • limited number of respondents (e.g. max 100),
• limited possibility to hide the survey results (e.g. only public access), • presence of ads in the survey,
• etc.
Nevertheless, it is hard to indicate the best offer among the payable accounts. The fee for them is charged monthly in return for e.g. access to advanced functions necessary for creating more de-manding questionnaires. The higher the subscription fee, the greater the offered functionality.
The conducted analysis of free services offering the creation of electronic surveys also revealed their commercial nature. They are, after all, focused on offering commercial sales through subscrip-tion sales of payable accounts. The free-of-charge accounts appear to be an addisubscrip-tion promoting the service outside. In the case of payable accounts we receive highly advanced functionality. Unfortu-nately users need to subscribe to such an account and pay monthly for it, regardless of the amount of time during which they actually use it.
Creating an electronic survey using Internet services offers numerous advantages. One of the major ones is user-friendliness, which does not require any knowledge of programming language as we need to focus solely on constructing the questions and answers needed for our questionnaire. The major drawback is the (monthly) subscription fee in the case of payable accounts and limited func-tionality in the case of free accounts.
It must be, however, noticed that competition of the e-services market is very strong. For this reason major changes in the field of tools for creating electronic surveys should be anticipated, es-pecially given the fact that the e-services in Polish offered by world’s major Internet services pro-viders such as Google, Apple and Microsoft is constantly expanding. They offer access to their own tools.
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After the initial analysis was carried out, it turned out that an extremely interesting tool is an application called “Google Forms”. It is a useful tool for planning events, sending out surveys, pre-paring tests for students or collecting important information in an easy and user-friendly way. The Google Form may be connected with Google spreadsheet. Therefore it may be potentially used for creating electronic surveys [15].
5. Google Forms
Google is a well-known company in Poland, mainly due to its search engine. More and more people are also using other services of this company, e.g. Gmail mail system, Chrome browser, Youtube, Picasa application and so on. Google continuously invests in new solutions and takes over various smaller companies in the Internet industry. It may be noted that it is expanding its offer of going into many market segments, and continues to develop their own services (eg. Google+ social network, Hangout, Blogger, Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Mobile, Google Code, etc.). One such service is Google Docs, which offers the ability to create electronic files online, that is documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, drawings. This service is affiliated with Google Drive which allows you to store the files created.
For the purpose of this article an additional analysis of Google Forms as a tool to conduct online surveys was carried out. After registering your own Google Account and accepting the Terms of Services of Google Docs and Google Drive, a new electronic form (fig. 7) was created and made available to others without any problems.
Fig. 7. Google Forms Source: http://www.docs.google.com (access date: 30.03.2013).
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Responses were stored in a separate file in a spreadsheet form. Based on analysis, we concluded that Google Forms has a lot of advantages and can be used as a tool to create simple electronic questionnaires. The major advantages of this service include:
• No fees, • Polish interface, • No ads,
• Easy and intuitive interface,
• Possibility to create all the basic types of questions in the polls, • Possibility to present the aggregate surveys results online,
• Possibility to export to the computer all the answers in xlsx, cvs, etc. formats, • Possibility of inclusion, exclusion and copying of created surveys,
• Possibility to send bulk invitations to selected individuals,
• Continuous development of e-services and new functionalities (e.g. random order of questions, the ability to input videos, the ability to place images, an increasing number of themes that you can edit, progress bar, etc.)
Among the noted minor flaws, this service as a tool for creating and conducting surveys, in-cludes:
• No personalization of invitations (i.e. you cannot create a mailing list and send person-alized invitation to each person with a unique identifier),
• No option of placing the survey under your own Internet domain and without Google Forms logo,
• No option of creating your own custom types of questions,
• No option of correcting the survey responses during and after it has been released. Because this service is constantly expanding, it is certainly an interesting alternative for sites that offer e-services for creating electronic surveys. Google Forms can be perfectly used especially in standard simple research among pupils, students, employees, business partners and members of various organizations and associations.
6. Conclusions
The hereby article presents three basic methods of creating electronic surveys. Creating one’s own electronic survey using software for creating websites is an extremely complex job. It is very time consuming and requires advanced knowledge about website creation. For this reason it is a good method but only for people or organizations that carry out research in a continuous manner (rather just once) and that need non-standard electronic survey functionality. The second method in which ready scripts are used for creating electronic surveys on one’s own server is advisable for individuals often conducting research who wish to reduce their expenses and provide data safety. The third method that consists in using e-services is best for easy, uncomplicated electronic surveys, created just once. Unfortunately, the free accounts offered in dedicated services that provide e-services con-nected with creating electronic surveys are very often limited in terms of their functionality, the number of questions or respondents. The payable accounts offer very high functionality without limitations but require the payment of subscription fees.
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The selection of method and tool for creating an electronic survey is therefore an individual decision of the person in charge of the research and depends on a number of factors, including: costs, data safety and required functionality.
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METODY I NARZDZIA TWORZENIA ANKIET ELEKTRONICZNYCH
Streszczenie
Ankieta elektroniczna stała siĊ narzĊdziem badawczym nie tylko wykorzystywa-nym w naukach społecznych, ale równieĪ narzĊdziem wspomagającym analizĊ wielu obszarów działalnoĞci podmiotów gospodarczych. Pomimo tego, iĪ zasady tworzenia i prowadzenia badaĔ z udziałem kwestionariuszy ankiet są szeroko opisywane w lite-raturze to naleĪy zauwaĪyü, Īe ciągłej zmianie ulegają narzĊdzia i metody tworzenia ankiet elektronicznych w internecie. Dlatego celem tego artykułu jest analiza metod i narzĊdzi do tworzenia ankiet elektronicznych ze szczególnym uwzglĊdnieniem serwi-sów internetowych funkcjonujących w Polsce, które umoĪliwiają prowadzenie badaĔ ankietowych online.
Słowa kluczowe: ankiety elektroniczne, metody i narzdzia budowy kwestionariuszy elektronicznych, e-usługi, podejmowanie decyzji, badania ankietowe online Iwona Zdonek
Dariusz Zdonek
Institute of Economic and Computer Science Faculty of Organisation and Management Silesian University of Technology e-mail: iwona.zdonek@polsl.pl
