Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
consider the expense of technical skills for survey development or for using an
online service simply as a shift in expense from one mode of researching to
another. Rather than a decision based on budgetary constraints, the more impor-
tant considerations are those which will enable you to be successful in your study,
facilitating the best access to the best data for your particular research effort.
Technical specifics
Web-based surveys can be run from a hosted site, or from a server belonging
to the researcher. Online surveys are, technologically speaking, presented as
entry forms to a database, so a network-enabled (and preferably web-enabled)
database application such as the
FileMaker
pro application is one way to do it.
It has a forms editor which can be used to build the survey; and the responses
are stored directly in the FileMaker database, which can be accessed and
reports generated using built-in tools. When creating a new file, Filemaker pre-
sents a dialog to create a field.
The type of field can be text, numbers, dates or containers. To create an input
field with check boxes or radio buttons, which are useful to limit the possible
inputs, the field has first to be created, and then modified with the Format-
>
Field
Control-
>
Set Up menu.
