SurveyGold 8

SurveyGold is ideal for individuals, educational institutions and organizations that need to quickly create and conduct exams or surveys over the web, over the phone or with a printed questionnaire form. It provides point-and-click features that make collecting and reviewing results quick and easy. Full support for automated test scoring is included.

An Explorer-style expandable view displays respondents and surveys that have been created. Four tabs access the main features: survey setup, administration, view and analyze results. The system is designed to be operated by the individual administering the survey, making it ideal for conducting telephone surveys or for compiling results from web questionnaires or email responses. An attractive form can be printed, distributed to respondents, and later recorded.

Major Features:

1. Create web surveys quickly and easily. SurveyGold requires no programming or web skills. Quickly and fluidly create your surveys via software that runs on your computer using an intuitive and familiar files-and-folders view. In contrast to SurveyGold, web-hosted solutions like SurveyMonkey.com create surveys using proprietary form layout tools offering a considerably slower experience in a web browser. Collect responses automatically into the SurveyGold software for viewing, analysis and reporting.
2. Flat-rate pricing enables web surveying with no worries. Other web survey solutions charge you for each survey or for the number of responses you collect, or both. This makes it hard to predict how much it will cost you to conduct a survey, especially if you are unsure as to how many responses you will collect. With SurveyGold there are no worries about predicting the future. You can conduct unlimited surveys and collect unlimited responses with your activated SurveyGold Plus subscription service. This service is included in the purchase price and renewable annually for a nominal price.
3. Deploy your web survey to your website. The SurveyGold web survey form is a single file that can be easily distributed in a variety of ways. You can place the file on your website. For private surveys within your organization you can even deploy the web survey form via a network file share, folder, CD, USB drive or collaborate server such as SharePoint™. For public-facing surveys, you can emphasize your organization's branding by directing respondents to a link on your website, including your own logo, color and style elements in the web survey form, and even a custom "thank you" page.
4. Create and conduct the same survey online and offline. Conduct your survey via the web, in-person, over-the-phone, on paper, via kiosk at the same time. Easily coalesce survey responses from all of these sources into your SurveyGold software for viewing, analysis and reporting.
5. View/filter results and publish reports of survey results. View 3D graphs and cross-tabs, means and weighting indexes. Create a filtered subset of responses based on how a respondent answered a question or a date range. Publish reports via Word™, PDF, or HTML. Create filtered views of respondents based on responses and date ranges. Convert data to Excel™, SPSS™, and more
6. Access your survey data forever. Even if you allow your SurveyGold Plus subscription service to expire you can still use your SurveyGold software to conduct offline surveys and access all of your surveys and response data including responses from your web surveys conducted in the past. This is because SurveyGold delivers web survey responses to your computer. In contrast, web-hosted solutions like SurveyMonkey.com lock you out of your data unless you maintain an active subscription to access your survey responses.
7. Convert responses to other data formats. Convert responses to Excel, SPSS, HTML, text for further analysis using other tools.
8. Built-in spell-checker. Provides support for spell-checking in 12 languages.
9. Share your surveys and results. Import/export feature provides the ability to share surveys and results between you other SurveyGold users.
   

Enhancements:

1. New Features
   • Setup Survey
   • • Folders - Provides the ability to organize surveys into groups. For example, you could create one folder of current surveys, another folder for archived surveys, etc. After creating a folder, simply drag and drop your surveys into the folder of your choosing.
     • Weighting Index - Provides the ability to define a set of attributes (such as "cost", "dependability", "accuracy", etc.) and associate them with your survey via the survey properties sheet. You can then assign any one of these attributes to a question choice along with an integer score (positive or negative) in the question properties sheet. In the Analyze Results feature, the Weighting Index report for an individual or set of respondents multiplies the relative importance of a attribute against the score awarded to a question addressing that attribute. The result is a new view of survey results that gives consideration to relative importance of the attributes you have defined.
       
     • Multi-Page Web Survey Form - Provides the ability for each survey section to be displayed on separate web page. Provides the ability to skip over a section (or sections) based on the response to a particular question. Required field validations and data validations (see next topic) are performed as each section is submitted.
       
     • One-Click Web Survey Deployment - Provides the ability to distribute your web survey form to the surveygoldplus.com website with a single click.
       
     • Web Survey Form Logo, Color and Font Styles - Provides the ability to customize the look and feel of your web survey form. Display your logo graphic file at the top of the web survey form. Specify color and font preferences. Name your preference set so it can be easily reused on other web survey forms you create.
       
     • Web Survey Cutoff Date and Time - Provides the ability to automatically conclude your web survey form at a date and time that you specify.
       
     • Web Survey Maximum Respondent Count - Provides the ability to automatically conclude your web survey form after a specific number of web survey respondents have been collected.
       
     • Web Survey Data Validation - Provides the ability to enforce data type and/or data format validations in a fill-in-the-blank response field. Here are some of the validations available:
     • • response value must be numeric
       • response value must be within a specific range of integer values
       • response value must be a particular date format
       • response value must be a valid email address format
       • response value must be a particular postal code format
     • Web Survey Auto-Responder - Provides the ability to have an email sent immediately after a web survey respondent submits their responses.
     • Export/Import Surveys - Provides the ability to import and export surveys (and optionally responses) so that you can share them with other SurveyGold users.
       
     • Software Update Wizard - Provides the ability to automatically download and install the most up-to-date version of SurveyGold software.
   • View Results
   • • Memorized Filters - Provides the ability in the View Results tab to create a results filter (based on question responses and/or date ranges) for the survey you are viewing and then name it ("memorize" it) for later use. The value to this new feature is that provides quick and easy access to routinely applied filters.
       
     • View Multiple Results Series - Leverages the Memorized Filters feature by providing the ability in View Results to display multiple sets of responses (side-by-side in multiple graph series) for the survey you are viewing. The value of this new feature is that it provides the ability to show trends of previous period to current period, comparisons of demographic groups, etc.
   • Analyze Results
   • • Weighting Index Reports - Provides weighting index analysis for an individual or set of respondents multiplies the relative importance of a attribute against the score awarded to a question addressing that attribute. The result is a new view of survey results that gives consideration to relative importance of the attributes you have defined.
2. Enhancements
   • General
     
   • • Updated User Interface - Provides a new and improved look and feel including graphic popup menus, simpler drag-and-drop in Setup Survey, mouse-over context help, more attentive status dialogs, and more.
       
     • Improved Database Performance - An upgraded version the database provides improved performance by providing intelligent caching for optimal performance.
       
     • Web Survey Validations Performed Locally - Validations are performed without having to communicate with the surveygold.com web site. This improves response times and eliminates unwanted side-effects of having to click the browser's "Back" button.
       
     • Database Backup Enhancement - The database backup process formerly created a single file named backup_survey.db. The database backup process now  creates a file named survey_backup__.db where is a 32-character value that uniquely identifies your instance of SurveyGold and the value is the actual date and time that the backup file was created. For example, if the database backup file was created on March 5, 2009 at 1:15 PM, the backup file name might look like  survey_backup_1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF_20090305131500.db. This new naming convention provides the ability to have multiple instances of the backup file over time as opposed to the former implementation which only allowed for one backup database file. Having multiple database files provide more flexibility and greater data recovery options than having just one single backup database file.
   • Setup Survey
     
   • • Section Names Optional - Provides the ability to hide a section name in a survey form. This option is specified via a checkbox in the section properties sheet.
       
   • Conduct Survey
     
   • • Skip To Section - In addition to the existing horizontal slider which allows you to skip to a particular question, there is now a dropdown list box that provides the ability to skip to the first question in a particular section.
       
     • Get Web Responses - Clicking on this button and selecting the HTTPS in the Advanced section causes web survey responses to be downloaded via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the leading security protocol on the Internet. This feature provides a highly secure encrypted connection for downloading web survey response data from surveygold.com where the responses are transiently held to the SurveyGold 8 software where the responses are permanently recorded.
       
   • View Results.
     
   • • Analyze Results Using Filter View - When a filter is applied, a button entitled "Analyze Results Using Filter View" appears prominently. This provides the ability to perform Analyze Results actions (e.g., Word report, convert responses to Excel) using just the respondents in the filter.
     • Analyze Results Using Series View - When viewing multiple series, a button entitled "Analyze Results Using Series View" appears prominently. This provides the ability to perform Analyze Results actions (e.g., Word report, convert responses to Excel) using just the respondents in the series.
       
   • Analyze Results. Improved Graphics - Graphs produced via the Publish Word and Publish Web actions are now sharper in appearance.
3. Problems Fixed
   • Setup Survey. When saving a web survey that included a matrix section of questions that are all multiple choice and a specific number of choices was specified, the formatting resulting checkboxes in the web survey form was not desirable. This issue has been resolved.
   • Analyze Results
   • • When saving a cross-tab report to Excel format, the resulting columns now appear correctly in Excel.
     • When selecting the Graph Section action, the section selection window only displays the first six sections. The remaining sections are accessible by pressing the down arrow, but this is still visually confusing for those surveys with a large number of sections from which to select. The window has been altered to include a vertical scroll bar in the list of sections. This will make it easier and more obvious how to select a particular section that is not visible in the list of the first six sections in a survey.

Requirements:

• Pentium 100
• 60 MB available drive space
• Email client if conducting web surveys