Creating a Survey on Google Drive

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1 Creating a Survey on Google Drive It's easy to create a survey instrument on Google Drive (formerly called Google Docs). It has some distinct advantages over other free web-based survey services, such as Survey Monkey, in that: There is no limit to the number of questions or responses. (The free version of Survey Monkey has a limit to both the number of questions and number of responses allowed.) IP addresses from which the survey was taken are not revealed. (You are able to collect them in Survey Monkey, if you wanted to.) It's budget-friendly (as in: FREE) with no other price plans On the other hand, Google Drive is not as "slick" in the way the survey data can be collected and "dissected," whereas Survey Monkey (especially in the paid versions) can be pretty sophisticated in that area. Plus, it IS on Google. So if you have concerns about Google and its privacy policies, you may want to look elsewhere. Getting Started First, you must have EITHER a Gmail account and/or a Google Sites account. Only YOU (as the survey creator) need to have one. (The survey participants do not. You can the link to anyone.) Just head to and login. Again, even if you only have a Google Sites account, it WILL work with Google Drive, as well. Next, click the Create button on the far left, and from the ensuing menu specify Form: Browser Alert!! Not surprisingly, Google Drive recommends that you use Google Chrome as your browser. Internet Explorer and Firefox work just as well for MOST things. That said, Internet Explorer should probably be your LAST choice while working on a survey in Google Drive. The same can be said for taking a survey; it won't hurt to mention to your survey recipients that Firefox and Chrome should be their first choices, though it "should" work in Internet Explorer. You will then be asked to choose a template. You can see for yourself what they look like on the screen that comes up. (And you can change the template later on!) Also, this is your opportunity to title your form, as well:

2 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 2 Give your survey a title up here, and pick the theme below. Don't worry you can always change either one later. You will then see the sample form shown below. You will have seven options for the drop-down menu for Question Type, though the default one you see first is the Multiple choice type. The types are explained in more detail on the following pages. You can always change the Theme after creating a form by clicking this link on top. You can also change the name by editing the box below. Your question types available are: Text (good for short answers, such as names or addresses) Paragraph Text (for longer answers) Multiple Choice (for only one answer) Checkboxes (for multiple answers) Choose from a List (which creates a dropdown menu listing the choices) Scale (meaning Likert Scale; only numbers are stored in the spreadsheet; see screen capture on page 6 and samples below) Grid (see below) The checkbox Go to page based on answer will direct the user to a specific page on your survey based on their answer to a multiple choice question. This implies that you will create a multi-paged survey.

3 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 3 Most of the question types are self-explanatory, and Google does a good job explaining most things along the way. The Grid option enables you to create a table of choices, such as this: If creating a grid, note that ROWS are the items that are limited to one response each, not the columns! (It's easy to make this mistake the first time you create one.) Additionally, be aware that your results spreadsheet displays the actual values given. (See the sample screen capture on page 7.) On the previous screen capture, you'll notice there is a checkbox for Required Question. These will appear on the form with red asterisks and will be required for input before the user can Submit the form. Also, there is a Help Text option. Help text appears underneath the question. Here is an example of a question that uses both of these options: The Scale question type offers a variety of Likert Scale options, from 1 to up to 10. However, you can only fill in terms for the extremes of the scale and not any in the middle. If you wanted to show ALL options in your Likert Scale, you should consider using the Grid question type instead. Where's the bold button?!? Can I italicize?!? No and that's one downside to Google. All questions (and answers) are plain text, though their appearance may vary by Theme chosen. And no, you can't use HTML, either. When you are finished editing a question, click the Done button immediately below it (see screenshot at the bottom of the previous page) to see how it will appear on your survey. To go back to editing, simply hover over it with your mouse and click the pencil icon:

4 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 4 When you are ready to add another question, click the Add Item button at the bottom. Note that this is also where you can add a section header or page break for longer surveys: As you build your survey, you can re-order the questions by hovering your mouse over the question, and then clicking and dragging the question to another location on the survey: Tip: Make sure you see that blue line on the far right to make sure you are dragging it to the right place. I have personally found it easier to drag things UP rather than DOWN. (Be aware, however, that experience has shown this will NOT always consistently re-order the questions on your spreadsheet that will contain the survey results especially if you already clicked the Send Form button, as described below.) Other Tasks You can change the confirmation message survey recipients see upon completing the survey by editing the bottom of the screen, where you will find a Confirmation Page window.

5 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 5 One thing to be aware of when collecting results is that there's nothing to keep people from taking the survey more than once. In fact, the confirmation screen (above) practically encourages it by pre-checking the choice Show link to submit another response! Fortunately, you can obviously disable that checkbox, though in theory there's still nothing to keep someone from submitting a survey multiple times. If you ask for something like an address, though, you can later download the results to Excel and remove duplicates, perhaps only accepting the first timestamp. Finishing Up After you've selected a Theme and created your questions, you can get a "sneak preview" of your survey by clicking on the link at the View Live Form button at the top of any screen: Be careful! Google opens that up in a separate tab, along with the ability to edit that form from a new tab! It's all too easy to have a few too many tabs open in Google and lose track of which tab is which! To give users the actual web address where this survey will be, click the Send Form button that is at the bottom of the editing screen. The "send" part of this is slightly misleading, since this really does not "send" the form anywhere, but merely shows you the web address:

6 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 6 When you click the Done button on the box above, by default your Drive listing will ALSO now include a Google Drive spreadsheet with the same name as your form, only with (Responses) at the end to differentiate it from the form itself: Also, once you click Done, you really don't want to change the order of questions on your survey; the results may be unpredictable! (The form will look okay; the spreadsheet may not.) Closing the Survey to Prevent More Survey-Takers By default, your survey is always "open" and will accept responses, at least after you give someone the link. To stop accepting responses, in the edit mode click the Accepting responses button to toggle this off: Accessing Survey Results or Re-Editing Your Survey Once you've created the survey, you may access it again by heading back to Google Drive. The survey should appear on the listing of your documents, and the spreadsheet of responses will have the same name followed by (Responses). If you don't see them, be sure to click the More option further down on the left: Click on the Responses link to see the spreadsheet view of your survey. This is how you will be collecting your results. Basically, this spreadsheet view will give you survey responses as they are submitted:

7 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 7 When you are finished collecting you data, don't forget to STOP accepting responses, as covered previously. Exporting Your Spreadsheet To export this information into Excel, simply click the File drop-down menu. You have the option of downloading your results as a CSV file or as an Excel file, among other formats: Tip if you're using the Grid option rather than a Likert scale As mentioned previously, a Likert scale is easy to create, but Google Forms only allows you to label the extremes the scale. On the other hand, only the NUMBER is downloaded onto the spreadsheet, making it easy to create an average. The Grid option allows you record each item on a scale, but on the other hand it records the actual text of the response options, as you can see from the screen captures on this page. For ease of creating a mean/mode, etc., you may want to use Excel's Find/Replace option to convert specific responses to numbers after you download the spreadsheet.

8 Creating a Survey on Google Drive 8 For Those Who Dislike Spreadsheets. You can also view your responses in a more graphics-based view in the Form editing view by clicking on the Responses menu item, and then Summary of Responses: While not good for analyzing large sets of data, it will at least provide you with the raw percentages each response had: Ken Black Associate CLTE Director, Teaching and Learning Technologies Dominican University Updated May 2014