Comments on: Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:24:02 +0000

I suspect that linking age and gender to a personal static IP address could still be considered personal information, but I’ve not checked recent case law.

But you illustrate my point pretty well: different countries have different privacy laws and the US is pretty weak, which is why European users in particular should be wary of hosting surveys in the US, especially when you also consider the famously expensive US legal system. I don’t understand why it’s unreasonable to expect data submitted to a research survey to be kept private and anonymous unless I’m told otherwise up front.

Personally, I agree with the general position on personal data in England, so I do believe that surveys hosted under weak privacy regimes are bad in general.

By: Sally

Sally — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:27:58 +0000

I am using the survey for very cursory and anonymous market research for a potential business plan… asking only age and gender, and very impersonal questions about whether they would potentially use a product. I´m from the US, and under our privacy law generally only applies when the person has “reasonable expectation” of privacy. I don´t think anyone would expect this type of survey to be especially private. Regardless, this issue could be solved with a simple disclaimer.

I understand for your purposes privacy could be really important. But, I don´t think it makes sense to make a blanket statement that some software is bad only because it doesn´t fit your needs. It might fit someone else´s needs perfectly.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:33:45 +0000

I don’t know about the Google outputs. I’m a graduate statistician, so I just drop survey results into a stats package like R. OpenOffice also has some passable data exploration tools.

Javascript: It’s not a question of browser support. People with various accessibility problems use tools like NoScript.net to limit or stop JavaScript because most websites are difficult enough to use without having things moving around of their own accord. Also, people who want their browsers to be more secure will restrict it too. Yes, how much this matters depends on your target audience, but there are few surveys where you want responses correlated with physical ability.

Privacy: at least here, if for no other reason like ethical behaviour or concern for community, you should be concerned because it’s the law (Data Protection Act) and it covers all personal data, not only highly sensitive stuff. Read up on http://www.ico.gov.uk/

By: Sally

Sally — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:56:13 +0000

Thanks for the response! I also hate Survey Monkey but for different reasons. Mostly because the usability is terrible, and it can be very buggy. I was searching for an alternative today (which brought me to this blog post)..and in the process also came acros Qualtrics. I am enjoying the usability and functionality so far. You can do some really creative things with the question types, and the analytic functions seem to be pretty advanced. I have tried Google forms before, but I had to do all my own analytics writing a bunch of excel functions… felt like I was reinventing the wheel. Although maybe there´s some kind of app you can use with Google in order to do a quicker analysis?

About JavaScript… what browser doesn´t run it? Every other web site you go to seem to use it. The percentage of people using browsers that don´t supoprt JavaScript must be really really small. (Although how big of an impact this makes on your survey, depends who you are attempting to survey, I suppose!)

Also, I don´t exactly understand the concern about privacy. I wouldn´t use any of these tools for surveying of highly sensitive information. So if I want to do a straw poll on a topic of little consequence.. is there a reason I should be really concerned about privacy?

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:44:42 +0000

Qualtrics looks similar to Survey Monkey but less popular: it requires javascript (so won’t work on some accessibility and security-conscious browsers), has a weak privacy policy that says it follows the “safe harbour” scheme but is only self-certified and contradicted by the “The Company makes no representations that its materials or content are appropriate or available for use in other locations” in the terms of use, Utah law for disputes, … I’d avoid it.

By: Sally

Sally — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:01:28 +0000

What do you think of Qualtrics?

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:59:20 +0000

I can’t offer a good comment because Easy Going Survey doesn’t work for me. My browser “detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete” on a test survey (the Course Evaluation Product Test), but the FAQ says “a survey can be answered using any browser even if it does not accept cookies or Javascript” so I’m not sure why the redirect loop.

By: David

David — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:29:21 +0000

Hello, I´d like to inform you about http://www.easygoingsurvey.com

It´s a newly launched English version of the widely popular encuestafacil.com (Spanish) that allows unlimited surveys to be launched with unlimited questions in its basic free version. Of course we also include real-time results, graphs, statistics, templates, and the ability to design a survey completely from scratch. Give it a try! I´d love to hear any comments! — David

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 09:21:40 +0000

Rational Survey says the right things, but then the big “Get Started” button does nothing. Another Javascript-required site which fails to degrade gracefully. I prefer the alternatives I suggested above.

By: Natan

Natan — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:53:30 +0000

Another good Survey Monkey alternative is Rational Survey. It integrates well with Twitter & Facebook and has superb analytics.

http://www.rationalsurvey.com/survey_tool/survey_monkey