About OwnSurvey

1. Plan your questions
   Put some time into planning your list of questions. Plan your questions carefully so that they cover everything you really want to learn from your responses.
   
   The respondent's are usually anonymous (unless you ask for their names) and they will most likely gladly answer even personal questions very honestly. Keep this in mind when preparing your questions. There is no need to be embarrassed to ask what you really deep down want to know.
   
   Keep in mind the different question styles that are provided when planning your questions. You can choose the radio buttons style for multiple choice answers or drop down menus (for both styles only one answer may be chosen). You can use check boxes (where the respondent may check several answers) or rank groups where you ask respondents to rank several items in the order they choose. Of course, some questions would require a free text style answer.
   
   
   
2. Create your online questionnaire
   Once you have your questions set, use OwnSurvey to create a questionnaire that lists all your questions. You may choose the layout for each question, be it free text, radio button group, check box group, drop down menu or rank group. You also may find the date layout useful for a question that requires a date for its answer and the header layout when you want to display text that is not part of a question, for example, instructions on how to answer.
   
   Popular radio button groups, drop down menus, check box groups and rank groups are available for your use upon a click of a button. However, you will probably also need to create new ones to reflect your own possible answers for your various questions. You can create as many radio button groups, check box groups, drop down menus and rank groups as you like. They will all be available to you every time you visit OwnSurvey and will not need to be recreated when working on new surveys in the future.
   
   At any time while creating the questionnaire, you can view how it would appear to those who would respond to it.
   
   
   
3. Distribute your questions
   After creating your questionnaire, it's time to send it out there for people to be able to respond to it. You have a number of options:
   
   
   1. Advertise your questions
      With this option you are given a link (URL) to your questionnaire. With this link you can:
      
      
      • Send an email including the link to those who you would like to respond to your questions.
        
      • Place the link on your own web site or as an advertisement on another web site.
        
      • Post your link on a forum that is related to your questions.
        
        
   2. Share your survey with friends on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and others.
      Social networks are a great way for us to let our friends know about our interests and generally what's new in our lives. To help distribute your survey among people you know, OwnSurvey makes use of social network buttons such as Facebook's 'Like' and Twitter's 'Tweet'. When using these buttons, you are adding a post on your social network site inviting friends and followers to respond to your survey. Be sure to add your own comment when sharing your post. Adding a good comment about your survey may increase the likelihood it receives more responses.
      
      
   3. Automatic email distribution
      OwnSurvey will automatically send an email including the link to your survey (questionnaire) to the email addresses of those you wish to respond. Simply enter a list of email addresses to send your survey to. Use this option if you would like to keep track of the people you send your surveys to and of who has and who hasn't responded. Also use this distribution option to make sure you receive only a single response from each respondent. OwnSurvey will never make any other use of the email list you provide besides sending your questions to that list (see our Privacy Policy).
      
      
   4. Word of Mouth
      Tell people how to easily respond to your survey. They simply go to OwnSurvey.com and enter your survey's code. The emphasis here is on 'tell people' as opposed to 'send email to people'.
      
      
   5. Go public
      This option is useful if your questions are not intended for a particular group and you would like everyone and anyone to go ahead and respond to your survey. OwnSurvey will advertise your questions for you.
      
      

Introduction

1. What is OwnSurvey?
2. Why should I do a survey?
3. Why should I choose OwnSurvey to create online surveys?
4. What is unique about OwnSurvey?
5. What are the 3 steps of the 'survey experience' according to OwnSurvey?
6. How does OwnSurvey make conducting surveys easier and more effective?
7. Can I use OwnSurvey for creating quizzes, tests and other forms?
   
   

   Creating my questionnaire and getting it out there

8. Can I notify people I meet of my survey without having to send them a link (URL)?
9. What are the various ways to send out my survey so that people may respond to it?
10. Can I design my questionnaire so that a question is displayed or not displayed depending upon the answers to previous questions?
11. What if I would like a question to include the answer of a previous question?
12. Can I have respondents be automatically redirected to a new questionnaire or survey?
    
    

    Once my survey gets responses

13. Will I receive notice once a new response to my survey arrives?
14. Can I prevent respondents from responding twice?
15. In which ways can I receive feedback on my survey?
16. How does OwnSurvey allow your survey's respondents to be involved beyond just responding to your survey?
17. What are the ways I can make notes as I go over my survey's responses?
18. I would like to view survey responses and results only for responses with a certain criteria. Can I filter responses?
19. Can I export the responses to my survey to Excel?
20. How can I study the responses and draw effective conclusions?
    
    

    Miscellaneous

21. My survey has received a response. Can I still change my survey's questions?
22. Can I remove or change responses to my survey?
23. How can I track my reponses?
24. Can I add images, audio and Youtube videos to my survey?
25. I am a teacher. How can OwnSurvey help me?
26. Can I write math expressions in questions?
27. List of terms and jargon used in OwnSurvey
    
    

1. What is OwnSurvey?

OwnSurvey is a tool to create online surveys and questionnaires. We help you create a questionnaire and get it sent out for people to respond. OwnSurvey is intended for those who simply wish to ask people questions or for those who wish to do a survey.

2. Why should I do a survey?

Questions, questions and more questions. We are all curious by nature. For each of use there are often times when we would like to ask our friends or colleagues about what they think or what they want. That's what this site is all about; to help you go ahead and ask! See how small children ask many questions? They simply wish to grow with better knowledge and a better understanding of themselves and of the people and world around them. Surveys or questionnaires are a number of questions that when answered, provide us with getting that much closer to finding the things we are looking for. Everybody has a need to ask. So ask away, send questions out there! The answers you receive would surely prove to be enlightening and entertaining.

3. Why should I choose OwnSurvey to create online surveys?

OwnSurvey is an easy to use and user friendly tool for creating surveys and questionnaires. OwnSurvey stores all the surveys you have created over time securely within your personal account and you may access them and your responses at any time. Whether you are part of a team doing a survey to conduct professional and confidential research or someone who, for entertainment purposes, wants to ask friends a number of questions, or even a trip organizer who would like to gather information from those travelling, OwnSurvey was created especially for you. Moreover, we are open to any suggestions you may have for new features that may help increase the effectiveness of OwnSurvey to help you realize your goal of getting your questions out there, receiving responses and analyzing the results.

4. What is unique about OwnSurvey?

Some of our unique features are:

• A unique set of distribution methods designed to effectively send your survey to your potential respondents.
• Customize your survey's theme by uploading your logo or an image to be placed in the survey's header.
• An easy to use branching logic (we call these 'Display/Skip rules') mechanism.
• A reliable mechanism to ensure that a respondent cannot respond to your survey more than once.
• The ability to periodically replace an existing survey with a new survey without redistribution. Your respondents will automatically arrive at the new survey (questionnaire).
• Choose from a ready-to-use set of common radio button groups, check box groups, drop down menus and rank groups.
• Radio button groups, check box groups, drop down menus and rank groups are stored as separate entities. As such, a particular drop down menu, for example, is created once, though may be used in multiple surveys.
• A special filtering mechanism that allows focusing on selected responses according to criteria.
• Set code values for question options allowing for compatible usage in statistics applications such as SPSS. For example, 'NY' for the state New York or 'M' for Male and 'F' for Female.
• The ability to add 'hidden' questions within your questionnaire allowing you to comment on answers to the questions preceeding it.
• Boost research capabilities by displaying charts for filtered responses and for aggregated categories.
• Online correlation and contingency charts showing relationships between questions.
• Allow respondents to see how others responded or to view Results & Stats including all or selected charts. Optionally let your respondents quench their curiosity by allowing them use of research tools.
• Surveys look great also for right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.
• Create not just surveys, but also quizzes and tests.
• Add images, audio and Youtube videos to your survey questions.

5. What are the 3 steps of the 'survey experience' according to OwnSurvey?

The 3 steps are:

• Create your questionnaire. This step can further be divided into the following sub-steps:
  • Design your survey's questions
  • Edit the questions in the 'Edit Questions' page
  • Test your questionnaire by entering 'Test Responses'
• Distribute your questionnaire. This step involves sending and advertising your questionnaire.
• Study your survey's responses.

6. How does OwnSurvey make conducting surveys easier and more effective?

Some of our features that make surveys simple and effective are:

• The ability to use common, built in radio button groups, check box groups, drop down menus and rank groups. As an example, you will not have to create a drop down menu for a question such as 'In which country do you live?'. A 'Countries' drop down menu listing all the countries is ready for you to use.
• Once a radio button group, check box group, drop down menu or rank group has been created, it will not need to be recreated when it is required in another question or even in a new survey or questionnaire.
• A 'Test Response' feature allowing you to effectively test your questionnaire by seeing it exactly as a respondent would. Additionally, a link (URL) is available so that someone else (such as your boss, a colleague or a friend) may also test your survey and provide you with valuable feedback before you actually distribute it.

7. Can I use OwnSurvey for creating quizzes, tests and other forms?

Certainly. OwnSurvey can be used to create:

• Quizzes
  You can easily create quizzes using OwnSurvey. After respondents complete a quiz, the number of correct answers can be recorded and displayed. Upon answering each question, the correct answer can be highlighted and, in addition, an extended explanation of the answer can be displayed.
  
  
• Tests
  Tests, such as personality tests, can be created using OwnSurvey. Enter the number of points received for answering each of the questions' answer options. After respondents complete a test, the number of accumulated points is optionally recorded and displayed. Different messages can be displayed depending upon the number of accumulated points.
  
  
• Polls
  Polls can be termed as quick surveys that involve only a single question. Use OwnSurvey to create your poll and get responses.
  
  
• Registration forms
  OwnSurvey is a great tool for creating an online registration form. For example, if you are organizing a trip for a group of friends, use OwnSurvey to send a registration form including questions and instructions for each member of the travelling group.

8. Can I notify people I meet of my survey without having to send them a link (URL)?

Yes, by using the Word of Mouth (WOM) distribution. This method is especially effective when you present your survey in front of a group of people. With WOM distribution you simply enter a unique (and easy to remember) code for your survey. Then let your audience know that to respond to your survey, all they need to do is enter that private code in OwnSurvey's home page.

9. What are the various ways to send out my survey so that people may respond to it?

There are several ways to distribute your survey. A survey may be distributed using one or more of these methods.

• Your questionnaire has a unique link (URL) that directs respondents to the questionnaire's response page. Perhaps the most common form of distribution is to send your potential respondents an email including your questionnaire's URL. In addition, you can advertise your questionnaire on a web site using the URL.
• Post your survey on your favorite social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and more.
• Another form of email distribution is to let OwnSurvey automatically send the emails. You provide all your potential respondents' email addresses and OwnSurvey will send a separate email message to each potential respondent. Please use this form of distribution if you must be sure that each respondent respond no more than once. This distribution will also allow you to keep track of your respondents and send email reminders to those who have not yet responded. Note that OwnSurvey will not make any other use of the email addresses you provide.
• Make use of what we like to call the 'Word of Mouth (WOM) distribution'. Simply create a unique, but easy to remember code for your survey. Respondents will then be able to get to your survey by entering that code in OwnSurvey's home page (www.ownsurvey.com). Use this form of distribution when personally meeting potential respondents. The advantage with this distribution is that no emails need be sent. Your respondents just need to remember 'ownsurvey.com' and your (easy to remember) survey code.
• Use our 'Public distribution' for surveys intended for a public audience. Allow the general public to respond to your survey by adding the survey to the list of surveys in OwnSurvey's Public Area. Once again, you may use this form of distribution in addition to other forms of distribution.

10. Can I design my questionnaire so that a question is displayed or not displayed depending upon the answers to previous questions?

Yes. This feature is sometimes called 'branching logic'. We use the terms 'display rules' and 'skip rules'. You can set display/skip rules for each question within your questionnaire.

11. What if I would like a question to include the answer of a previous question?

No problem. As an example, if question number 3 is something like 'What is your name?', the next question may be something in the form of 'Hello <@3> and thanks for responding. Where are you from?'. This way, if a respondent's name is Jimmy, the question would display 'Hello Jimmy and thanks for responding. Where are you from?'.

12. Can I have respondents be automatically redirected to a new questionnaire or survey?

Yes. Consider these scenarios:

• A survey has received responses. The author notices then that the survey is missing a question and, since a questionnaire cannot be changed once it has been responded to, the author copies the old questionnaire to a new questionnaire and adds the missing question. The next step would be to redirect respondents to the new questionnaire. This way, future respondents would respond to the new survey without any need for redistribution or for sending the new (corrected) questionnaire's link (URL).
• A survey author regularly creates new monthly surveys and would like that respondents respond each month to the survey of that month. Instead of distributing this month's new survey to the same people as last month's survey, the author may redirect last month's survey to this month's survey. In this way, respondents always click the same link (URL) and are always represented with the new survey (the questionnaire corresponding to the current month's survey).

13. Will I receive notice once a new response to my survey arrives?

Yes, if you like. One of the properties in the 'Survey Properties' page allows you to request OwnSurvey to send a notification to your email after each and every new response or, less frequently, after each certain number of new responses.

14. Can I prevent respondents from responding twice?

Yes, you can. While many authors of surveys need not worry about people answering their survey more than once, some authors, especially those creating surveys intended for a study, may require that this would never occur.
In the 'Survey Properties' page, you may set whether to allow or to prevent the same respondent (more accurately, the same computer) from responding multiple times to the same survey. Please note however, that to be fully confident that your survey cannot receive multiple responses (from the same respondents), OwnSurvey's 'Email Distribution' should be used as the only distribution method. While the other distribution methods will also prevent multiple responses, they should not be completely relied upon for this.

15. In which ways can I receive feedback on my survey?

Receiving feedback during your survey's design stage is important. We offer a direct link (URL) for a 'Test Response' and it is recommended to send this link to a friend or colleague from whom you may receive valuable feedback about your survey. It is important to request such feedback 'before' you distribute your survey since once your survey has been distributed and a first response has arrived, changes to your questionnaire will not be possible (see also FAQ 20).
Feedback can also be received from respondents:

• You may allow respondents to enter feedback following their response.
• You may allow respondents to enter comments following their response and to view other respondents' comments. As author of the survey, you may remove selected (e.g. offensive) comments.

16. How does OwnSurvey allow your survey's respondents to be involved beyond just responding to your survey?

Allowing your respondents a peek beyond their response may prove to be a worthy incentive. For this reason, you may allow respondents to:

• View results and statistics. This allows the respondent to see how his/her response compares with other responses.
• View other responses. This is especially recommended when the questionnaire includes free text questions since these are not included in the survey's results and statistics. Note that a response may be viewed by other respondents only if the respondent specifically permitted it to be shared.
• Perform their own research. This can be achieved by the respondent's filtering of the responses according to criteria or by examining different results and statistics views. For example, viewing results of only responses for which the question 'What is your gender?' was answered with the value 'Male'. This would allow interested or curious respondents to perform their own study and draw their own conclusions about the nature of the responses.
  
  As the survey owner you are able to filter the responses given to the respondents according to criteria. For example, you may flag offensive responses or responses that seem to have inconsistent answers and then create a filter so that such flagged responses should not be available to the respondents.

17. What are the ways I can make notes as I go over my survey's responses?

We suggest two special ways for the survey's author to mark responses or to make comments upon them:

• By marking a response with a red, green or blue flag
  While scanning the responses, the survey author may wish, for example, to mark the most interesting responses with the green flag, responses made by respondents under 18 years of age will be marked with the blue flag and responses that seem to be offensive or inconsistent will be marked with the red flag.
• By including 'hidden questions' in the questionnaire
  A hidden question is one that is hidden from respondents. They are for the survey's author to fill while the responses are viewed.
  Such hidden questions may be used as:
  • Comments regarding the entire response or comments regarding answers of specific questions
  • A quantitative measure of a free text question's answer. For example, after a free text question asking for a customer's description of his/her shopping experience may follow a hidden question allowing the survey's author to note a measure (say, from 1 to 5) of the customer's satisfaction according to the free text answer provided.

18. I would like to view survey responses and results only for responses with a certain criteria. Can I filter responses?

Yes, our filtering feature allows focusing and displaying results and statistics only for selected responses. For example, you may filter all responses that answered 'Under 18' to the question asking for the respondent's age and answered 'Female' to the question asking the respondent's gender. Once this filter is set, the displayed responses and the results and statistics would be only for responses responded by females under 18. Notice that this example combined two conditions ('under 18' and 'female') with an 'And'. The filter can also 'Or' two conditions. Actually, a filter can combine however many conditions with any combination of ands and ors.
Conditions are not limited to questions' answered values but may include such criteria as the response date, the time it took to respond, flagged responses and more. The ability to filter responses in such a way can effectively assist in drawing useful conclusions while studying the response data.

19. Can I export the responses to my survey to Excel?

Yes, responses can easily be exported to an Excel worksheet. Once in Excel, you can create charts and graphs describing your data and also further export from Excel into various statistics applications such as SPSS or SAS.

20. How can I study the responses and draw effective conclusions?

We have various easy-to-use features allowing you to comfortably analyze your survey's responses.

• The results and statistics page displays charts and graphs representing your response data. This page is the most straight forward tool for a study of your survey's responses.
• Combine results and statistics with filtering responses. For example, display results and statistics only for the Male respondents and then compare with the Female respondents.
• In our correlation and contingency charts page, discover correlation and causation relationships between questions.
• Exporting your responses to Excel will allow the use of Excel's charts and graphs. For more advanced statistical analysis of your responses, export from Excel to statistics applications such as SAS and SPSS.

21. My survey has received a response. Can I still change my survey's questions?

For an effective and true study and comparison of survey responses, all respondents should respond to the same questions. For this reason, once a survey has received a response, the questionnaire may not be changed. It is important, therefore, to enter several 'test responses' before you distribute your survey to respondents. Test responses can always be deleted and they will not prevent questions from being added or changed.
Should, however, you need to add or change questions after your survey received responses, you may follow these steps:

• Copy your questionnaire to a new questionnaire using 'Copy survey'.
• Make the necessary changes to the questions in the new questionnaire.
• If you have already distributed your old survey, there is no need to redistribute. Instead, 'redirect' the old survey to the new survey.

22. Can I remove or change responses to my survey?

A response cannot be changed or be removed. Instead of removing an unwanted response, you may flag the response and filter only the non flagged responses. This way the unwanted response will not be viewed or taken into account when displaying results and statistics.
Examples of unwanted responses can be:

• A response that is one of multiple responses made by the same person.
• A response that was not answered honestly. For example, when inconsistencies are detected between various questions within the response.

23. How can I track my reponses?

When you use Email Distribution to publish your survey you will be able to track your responses:

• See who has and who has not yet responded. You can also send a reminder email to those who have not yet responded.
• See the names and email addresses the responses originated from.

24. Can I add images, audio and Youtube videos to my survey?

Yes, you are able to include images, audio and Youtube videos within your survey questions. A logo image or any picture/photo image can be added to your survey header.

25. I am a teacher. How can OwnSurvey help me?

Create worksheets and quizzes. Let AI help teach your students by adding Ask AI buttons next to questions.

26. Can I write math expressions in questions?

Certainly! Simply write the LaTeX code for the expression and place two dollar signs before and after the expression.
For example, writing the LaTex code: \$\$\int \left( \frac{x^3}{x + 1} + 2x + 1 \right) \, dx\$\$ produces $$\int \left( \frac{x^3}{x + 1} + 2x + 1 \right) \, dx$$

27. List of terms and jargon used in OwnSurvey

• Radio button group
  A group of options presented before the respondent. Next to each option is a button. Only one button (option) may be chosen.
  
  
• Check box group
  A group of options presented before the respondent. Next to each option is a box that may be checked. More than one box (option) may be checked.
  
  
• Drop down menu
  A drop down menu of options presented before the respondent. Only one option may be selected.
  
  
• Rank group
  A group of items presented before the respondent. The respondent is expected to rank the items in a preferred order.
  
  
• Free text
  A type of question for which the answer is given by writing text as opposed to selecting an option.
  
  
• Radio button scale
  A group of radio button options displayed horizontally. The options are numbered from lowest (1) on the left to highest on the right. Only one option may be chosen.
  
  
• Header
  A text displayed in the questionnaire that is not a question. For example, an explanation or note displayed before a group of questions.
  
  
• Hidden question
  A question intended for the survey author, not the respondent, to fill once the response exists. Respondents do not see hidden questions during their response.
  
  
• Mandatory question
  A question that must be answered.
  
  
• Display rule
  A rule or condition for whether a question is displayed or not displayed.
  
  
• Skip rule
  A rule or condition upon which a number of consecutive questions are skipped.
  
  
• Flag
  Mark a response with a red, green or blue flag.
  
  
• Redirect a survey
  Redirect a survey link (URL) so that instead of responding to a particular survey, the response is set to a new survey. This is an effective way of not having to redistribute the new survey.
  
  
• Filter
  Filter responses so that only a subset of the responses is retrieved according to criteria. Responses not meeting the criteria are not retrieved.