Survey Crafter - Frequently Asked Questions

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The following are some of the most frequently asked questions about Survey Crafter Professional.

The following table lists answers to some of the most frequently asked general questions about the software.

General (Back to top)

# Question Answer

1. What are Survey Crafter Professional's system requirements? Survey Crafter Professional is a Microsoft® Windows® desktop software application that runs under Microsoft® Windows® 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, NT 4.0, Millenium and 9x. The software requires 50MB of available hard disk space.
2. What do Survey Crafter Professional web surveys require from my web server? You can host a Survey Crafter Professional web survey on any web server running on Linux, Unix, Microsoft® Windows® or MacIntosh OS X or later. No additional software is required for web servers running on Linux or Microsoft® Windows® operating systems. Web servers running on Unix or MacIntosh OS X or later must have Perl 5 installed.
3. How many surveys can I create using one licensed copy of Survey Crafter Professional? You can create, administer and analyze as many surveys as you want. You can administer an unlimited number of paper, web and telephone surveys at the same time. However, if you would like to have a second person use the software to create and analyze surveys, you must purchase a second licensed copy for that person.
4. How many questions can I have in a Survey Crafter Professional survey? Survey Crafter Professional does not impose a limit on the number of questions you can have in a survey. Survey Crafter Professional has been tested with surveys with up to 1000 questions.
5. How many respondents can Survey Crafter Professional handle? Survey Crafter Professional supports up to 16 million respondents per survey.
6. How many pages can I have in a Survey Crafter Professional survey? Survey Crafter Professional does not impose a limit on the number of pages you can have in your surveys. For paper surveys, Survey Crafter Professional uses the printer and page layout settings you select to paginate the survey for you. For web and telephone surveys, you specify where pages begin and end by inserting page breaks in your surveys.
7. How many options per question does Survey Crafter Professional support? Survey Crafter Professional supports up to 255 options for closed-end, rating, all-that-apply, ranking and constant sum questions.
8. What languages can I use to write surveys in Survey Crafter Professional? You can write your surveys in any single-byte language that reads from left to right. For your convenience, Survey Crafter Professional comes with US English, British English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch spelling dictionaries.
9. Does Survey Crafter Professional support the metric system and the comma decimal point character? Yes. Survey Crafter Professional automatically detects the regional settings of your computer and displays the appropriate rulers and metrics throughout. For example, if you are in Australia, Survey Crafter Professional shows centimeters on the ruler at the top of the Survey Designer window and the comma decimal point character in the quantitative data in the Data window and in the quantitative calculations in the Analysis window.
10. What options do I have for getting technical support? Technical support for Survey Crafter Professional is free. If you are in the US or Canada, call 877.650.8527 or e-mail support@surveycrafter.com. If you are in another country, call 978.635.1717 or e-mail support@surveycrafter.com. Response time is usually within the hour on M-F 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM EST.

The following table lists answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about how the software handles surveys.

Surveys (Back to top)

# Question Answer

1. What types of questions are supported? Survey Crafter Professional supports closed-end (choose one from a list), all-that-apply (choose one or more from a list), rating (choose one from a list but store the response as a number), open-end, quantity, ranking (rank options against each other) and constant sum questions.
2. What question layout options are available? In total, there are 156 different layouts available. When you drag and drop a question into the Survey Designer window, you choose a layout for your question from a gallery of layouts. You can change your mind at any time and have Survey Crafter Professional automatically redisplay your question using a different layout.
3. What formatting options are available? Survey Crafter Professional's Survey Designer window is a fully-featured WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) word processor. You can use any combination of fonts, colors, background colors, etc. that are available on your computer. Survey Crafter Professional also has a "Block Styles" feature that allows you to quickly assign color and border schemes to your questions.
4. Does Survey Crafter Professional have a question library? Yes. The Question Library is one of several ways you can reuse questions from one survey to the next. Survey Crafter Professional comes with a question library that contains approximately 80 general-purpose questions organized by category. You can add your own questions to the Question library and create your own categories.
5. How does a Survey Crafter Professional web survey work? 1. Write your survey in Survey Crafter Professional's Survey Designer window.
2. Specify options in the Web Survey Setup dialog box.
3. Publish your web survey's files and copy them to your web server.
4. Provide links to your web survey or send out e-mail messages with links to your web survey.
5. Download the data file from your web server and import the file into Survey Crafter Professional for analysis.
6. How does a Survey Crafter Professional paper survey work? 1. Write your survey in Survey Crafter Professional's Survey Designer window.
2. Print your survey.
3. Use Survey Crafter Professional's built-in Interviewer to type responses from completed surveys.
4. Use Survey Crafter Professional's analysis wizards to create tables and charts.
7. How does a Survey Crafter Professional telephone survey work? 1. Write your survey in Survey Crafter Professional's Survey Designer window.
2. Use Survey Crafter Professional's built-in Interviewer to type responses from surveys completed over the telephone.
3. Use Survey Crafter Professional's analysis wizards to create tables and charts.
8. Can I simultaneously administer paper, web and telephone versions of my survey and analyze the results together? Yes. Survey Crafter Professional's Survey Designer window supports 3 layout modes: Print, Web and Interviewer. You can switch the layout mode at any time. Question layouts specifically designed for web, paper and telephone surveys are available for you to use to tailor your survey for each of the 3 methods. For example, you can have a question use a drop down in the Web and circles in the Print layout mode.
9. Does Survey Crafter Professional support anonymous surveys? Yes. Survey Crafter Professional surveys are by default anonymous.
10. Does Survey Crafter Professional support web surveys with restricted access? Yes. Briefly, you write your survey and include questions like user name, password, e-mail address, key, etc. at the beginning and then specify which questions you want to use to allow access to your web survey. Then you import or type the list of answers to these questions and publish your web survey with your list of answers.
11. Does Survey Crafter Professional support web surveys where respondents can revisit and update their answers? Yes. Briefly, you write your survey and include questions like user name, password, e-mail address, key, etc. at the beginning and then specify which questions you want to use to identify your respondents. Then you tell Survey Crafter Professional that you want respondents to be able to revisit your web survey to update their answers.
12. Can I simultaneously administer a survey in more than one language? Yes. You make a copy of your survey in the same Survey Crafter Professional study, assigning the new survey a different language package. You then change the language of the instructions, headings and questions in the new survey. You repeat this process, creating as many copies of the survey as you need. For a web survey, you publish each of the surveys separately and you can even have the web surveys share the same data file on the web server.
13. Can I simultaneously administer different variations of the same survey and analyze the answers to the common questions together? Yes. You create a second survey in the same Survey Crafter Professional study. You then copy selected questions from the original survey and add other headings, instructions and questions to the second survey. You repeat this process, creating as many variations of the survey as you need. For a web survey, you publish each of the surveys separately and you can even have the web surveys share the same data file on the web server.
14. Can Survey Crafter Professional make my web survey look like it belongs on my website? Yes. You create an HTML template file and tell Survey Crafter Professional to merge your survey's generated HTML with your HTML template file. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, ask technical support to assist you with this.
15. Can a Survey Crafter Professional survey automatically skip questions given previous answers or other conditions? Yes. You can add rules to your study that have Survey Crafter Professional automatically take respondents from one question block or page to another question block or page.
16. Can a Survey Crafter Professional survey show previous answers as part of questions that appear later in the survey? Yes. You insert a variable value field in your survey. You can also use a variable value field to show the value of an imported variable not associated with any question. You can also insert computed value fields to show respondents or interviewers calculated values.
17. Is it possible to chain web surveys together? Yes. You can have one Survey Crafter Professional web survey start another and even pass data from one web survey to the next.
18. Can a Survey Crafter Professional web survey automatically capture information not asked of respondents, such as IP address, logged-in user name, or the current date and time? Yes. You add one or more variables to your study to hold the information, instruct Survey Crafter Professional to include the variable(s) in the web survey's data file and add custom assignment rules to capture the information. Information such as the respondent's IP address or the current date and time are always available. Information such as the respondent's logged-in user name is typically available only when the respondent is on the same Intranet.

The following table lists answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about how the software handles data.

Data (Back to top)

# Question Answer

1. What data validation capabilities does Survey Crafter Professional have? Survey Crafter Professional's has built-in rules for quantity, ranking, and constant sum questions as well as for questions that you mark required. Survey Crafter Professional automatically checks to make sure answers to quantity questions are within the specified range, answers to ranking questions follow the ranking rules, answers to constant sum questions sum to the specified total and that required questions are answered.
2. Can I create my own custom data validation rules? Yes. In addition to using the built-in validation rules, you can add rules that have Survey Crafter Professional validate responses and show respondents your own warning and error messages. You can also use computed variables to create your own data validation scheme. One technique you can employ is to create computed variables that are automatically assigned 'OK' or 'Error' values depending upon conditions you specify. You can then use these computed variables to show only those respondents whose responses do not pass your validation tests.
3. Can I export my survey's respondent data to another application or to a database? Yes. You can export all or a subset of your survey's respondent data to a comma separated value (CSV) text file. CSV text files are easy to import into databases such as Microsoft® Access®. CSV text files are also easily opened by software applications such as Microsoft® Excel® and Microsoft® Word®.
4. Can I import data into Survey Crafter Professional? Yes. You can import text files in comma separated value (CSV) or fixed width format.

The following table lists answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about how you can use the software to analyze respondent data.

Analyses (Back to top)

# Question Answer

1. What analysis capabilities does Survey Crafter Professional have? Survey Crafter Professional has the following 10 analysis wizards: All-that-apply Question wizard, Banner wizard, Counts & Frequencies wizard, Correlation Matrix wizard, Count or Percentage Chart wizard, Cross Tabulation wizard, Descriptive Statistics wizard, Individual Responses wizard, Quantity Variable Chart wizard, and Ranking Question wizard. You can customize any table and chart generated by these wizards and also create computed variables. You can also use the Batch Report Designer to print and/or export your analysis tables and charts together as one report.
2. Can I customize the analysis tables built by Survey Crafter Professional's wizards? Yes. The analysis table editing environment is similar to Microsoft® Excel®. You can format cells, delete rows, columns and cells, insert rows, columns and cells, enter your own calculations, modify the existing calculations, set printing options, and so on.
3. Can I customize the analysis charts built by Survey Crafter Professional's wizards? Yes. You can use the Chart Wizard to quickly change the formatting of your chart or use the Chart Designer to take complete control over the appearance of your chart.
4. What types of charts are available? Survey Crafter Professional supports the following types of 2D charts: bar, line, area, step, combination, horizontal bar, pie, xy scatter, polar, radar, bubble, hi-lo, gantt and contour. 3D charts: bar, line, area, step, combination, horizontal bar, clustered bar, pie, doughnut, gantt, surface, scatter, and xyz.
5. Can I copy analysis tables and charts to other applications? Yes. You can copy a Survey Crafter Professional analysis table or chart and paste it in another application such as Micosoft® PowerPoint®, Microsoft® Word® or Microsoft® Excel®. You can also export an analysis table to a Microsoft® Excel® workbook, an HTML or a text file. You can export an analysis chart to a JPEG, bitmap or HTML file.
6. Can I do my own ad hoc querying in Survey Crafter Professional? Yes. Survey Crafter Professional uses an expression language that is similar to Microsoft® Excel®'s formula language. You can write your own expressions in the cells of an analysis table. You can also use the expression language to automatically assign values to computed variables. Survey Crafter Professional offers an expression builder to help you write expressions.
7. Can I segment my survey's respondent population? Yes. You create a computed variable that automatically assigns a segment to each respondent.
8. Does Survey Crafter Professional support weighted count, percentage and mean calculations? Yes. Survey Crafter Professional has a Category to Weights computed variable wizard that you can use to automatically assign weights to adjust for under and over-represented respondents. You can also manually assign weights to your survey's respondents. You can then have the Counts & Frequencies and Descriptive Statistics wizards use these weights to adjust count, percentage and mean calculations.
9. What qualitative analysis capabilities does Survey Crafter Professional have? You can use the Individual Responses wizard to list answers to any set of questions including open-end questions. In addition, you can have the Counts & Frequencies wizard show the different words and phrases listed in answers to your open-end questions. Survey Crafter Professional's expression language has over a dozen functions you can use to manipulate answers to open-end questions.
10. Can I compare the answers to questions from one period to the next? Yes. You create an additional variable and assign a period to each respondent. Then you use the variable to display calculations for any set of questions for each of the different periods.
11. Can I score the responses to my survey's questions? Yes. You create computed variables that automatically assign scores for each of the questions in your survey. You then create a computed variable that totals all of the scores for each respondent.

For more information, please call toll-free 877.650.8527 or 978.635.1717, or e-mail info@surveycrafter.com.