Qualtrics for Surveys & Forms

Qualtrics Research Suite is a full-featured, web-based application for building and conducting online surveys.  Qualtrics offers complex conditional logic and answer merging or piping, so surveys can present different questions based on respondents’ answers to previous questions.  Survey respondents can be selectively recruited via several methods including email and web links.  Respondent data can be organized using Qualtrics' reporting tools or exported for use in spreadsheets.  Qualtrics has a complex  permissions system that can allow or limit individual user access to survey writing, editing, deployment, and reporting functions.

Qualtrics is appropriate for more complex survey or data collection work, and it requires more time to learn than Google Forms.  If you are using Qualtrics specifically to employ one or more of it's advanced features, you probably building a longer or more complex survey.  So you need to spend time comprehensively planning your survey: what will I ask respondents (and what can I omit asking them)?  How will logic govern the questionnaire?  Do I need to build and upload a list of respondents, so I can track their participation?  Plus, budget time to pilot your survey (test it by collecting faux data) to be certain it functions properly, and collects the data you need.  Qualtrics is easy to use, but you should be thoroughly familiar with it and what you're doing with it, to ensure success. 

Before beginning to use Qualtrics, see some other options we have for survey or form creation that may be more appropriate for your work.

Plan your Qualtrics-based project using our web-based project template.

You can go to Qualtrics via my.canisius.edu.  Under "My Applications" you will see a Qualtrics icon.  

Qualtrics supplies excellent text and some video documentation at their Support site.  Additionally, the Center for Online Learning & Innovation has created some specialized tutorials:

Beyond specific technical or procedural questions, Qualtrics' Blog provides useful tips for survey construction.