Overview for Instructor:
SurveyWiz
(SW) produces simple and effective surveys quickly and easily. This
makes it a good tool for students to work with. Below, we construct
a simple survey including items from a new college-related anxiety scale
(i.e., a bogus anxiety scale I made) and the Zung Depression Scale (ZDS;
Zung, 1972). After constructing the survey page, you can use the
data to talk about a) construct validity (discriminant and convergent validity),
b) sampling issues, and c) response bias. Also, you could have students
give a paper-and-pencil copy of the same survey to some people and see
if there are any differences.
This page provides step-by-step
instructions for creating a simple, no-frills survey with SW. These
steps are split over several pages (ease shorten download times) and are
also described on a single-page handout (provided below) for student use.
If you want to use different surveys, just modify the handout. In
addition to this step-by-step example, I offer several suggestions for
using SW in your courses. If you come up with another example, please
let
me know.
Objectives:
SW
makes constructing Web surveys a snap. A Javescript program, all
you need to run the program is a copy of the webpage. It has a simple
user-friendly interface and, though it's not necessary, if you know a little
HTML, or you can use an HTML editor to spruce up the page. Let's
make a simple survey in SW. Keep in mind that SW creates the survey
and webpage, but you'll ultimately need to post that website on a server.
Before beginning this exercise, it would be helpful if you read over the
instructions included at the website.
We are going to construct
this survey using a new college-related anxiety scale (CAS). Some
students find college to be a stressful experience, and this measure assess
that anxiety. Depression is also a problem for many college students.
So, let's create a survey webpage that includes the Zung Depression Scale
(Zung, 1972), and some items for the CAS.
Getting Started:
1) Using your web browser, go to the SurveyWiz
website. If you want, you can download the webpage to your harddrive
so you don't have to be online to work on it.
2) Once the page opens, you need to name it. For the Survey
Name, we want to give it something descriptive for your respondents,
so lets call it College Anxiety Survey. So, type in 'College Anxiety
Survey' in the blank next to Survey Name. The Short Name
is used to name your survey in the SurveyWiz data file (we'll take a look
at that later). You want it to be short, but specific. For
the Short Name, enter 'Anxiety_College' in the blank next to Short
Name.
NOTE: You may
want to give it your own unique name for this exercise, so as not to confuse
your survey with anyone else completing the exercise.
3) Click the 1. Start Form button. You'll see some HTML code appear in the window at the bottom. We'll call this the HTML window. It's a scrollable window so you can see the HTML as it gets added. In case you aren't familiar with HTML, the text that's being added is the code needed at the beginning of a webpage. It also includes a line indicating where the instructions for completing the survey will go (see line 7). We'll come back and add the instructions later. Now, you should have something that looks like this:
Example of the interface
Creating Survey Items:
4) Now, we're ready to start entering items for our survey. We
have items from 2 different surveys: 1) the CAS and 2) the Zung Depression
Scale. For clarity here, we'll enter them so that the items for the
different surveys are kept together.
First, let's enter the 5
items for the CAS. In the blank below '2. Type your questions
here:', erase the text already on the line, "(type your first question
here)", and enter this text: "I'm not sure I can keep up with
the work in my classes."
SW allows respondents to
use a) text input or b) radio buttons for answer the questions. We
want respondents to rate their agreement to each statement, using radio
buttons and a 6-point scale. In the blank for Number of Buttons,
change the "5" to "6". Take a look at the labels on the next line
down. These represent the endpoints for our 6-point rating scale.
The current labels, "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree" work for us,
so leave them in there.
Now we're all set, so click
the 3b. Radio Button Scale button and SW will paste the HTML necessary
for that question into the HTML box. It gives the question a specific
variable name to keep track of it in the data file.
5) Now, we're ready to enter the rest of the items for the CAS. Repeat step #4 above for the remaining 4 items of the CAS. All the information for the Likert scale stays the same and all you need to do is add the text for the question and push the 3b. Radio Button Scale button.
Remaining CAS items (repeating
step #4 above):
item #2: I'm worried
I won't graduate on time.
item #3: I've been
able to get involved with other people on campus.
item #4: I spend a
lot of time thinking about all the work I have to do.
item #5: I find college
to be a pretty stressful environment.
Now remember, all you're doing is creating the HTML for adding these survey items to a webpage; SW isn't actually showing you the webpage yet. You'll see the finished product when you're done. For now, if you where using a web browser to see your questions as a webpage, here's what it would look like:
Preview of they survey
NOTE: Notice the radio button to the left of the question number. This is a default in SW, so if a respondent failed to answer a question, you can recognize that in this data file as teh default value.
NOTE: SW doesn't have a function to save the work you're doing in the process of survey construction. However, all this is doing is creating the HTML you need and pasting it to the HTML window. HTML can be saved in any basic text editor (e.g., MS Notebook). So, if you want to save the work you're doing, simply highlight the text in the HTML window, copy that text to a text document in MS Notebook, and save that file. If you want to come back and work on your survey more later, just copy the HTML back into the HTML window and pick up where you left off.
6) OK, so we have the 5 items for the CAS enter. We want to keep things separated for clarity, so let's insert a horizontal line before we enter the items for the next survey. Go to the HTML window, put the cursor at the very bottom on the text, and beginning on the next available line type the following:
<br>
<hr ALIGN=LEFT WIDTH="40%">
<br>
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