A popular Web-based survey tool, Qualtrics, now is available to the university community. Information technology services (ITS) and several colleges and departments recently teamed up to purchase a license that gives faculty, staff and students free access to the software.
The software can be used to create a simple survey, like a Government of the Student Body poll. Or it can build complex questionnaires, employing logic and branching. There are a variety of question formats, ranging from familiar multiple choice lists and matrix tables to more exotic options, like heat maps and hot spots.
It's easy to invite collaborators into a survey project. The survey creator uses a "share" option to give others access to building a survey, reviewing results or both. Survey results can be exported into several formats for analysis and display.
Getting started
- Log in to Iowa State's Qualtrics site, iastate.qualtrics.com, with your Net-ID.
- Hit the "click here to create your first survey" button to open a new survey file.
- To get some help, check out training resources. The "help and tutorials" tab in the top left corner of the page goes to Qualtrics University, home to training tutorials and support.
- If you'd like to join a newly formed ISU Qualtrics users group, send an email to Qualtrics-users-subscribe@iastate.edu.
Cost-effective
Several ISU colleges and departments already were using Qualtrics software and paying some $30,000 collectively in annual licensing fees, said Mike Lohrbach, senior systems analyst in ITS.
"With a university-wide license, approximately $53,000 annually, we were able to extend Qualtrics to a much larger audience," Lohrbach said. "We hope many faculty, staff and students will give this useful survey tool a try."
For nonprofit use only
ISU's licensing agreement with Qualtrics is only for nonprofit use. Projects that involve for-profit or revenue-generating activities aren't covered under the license agreement. Examples would include certain projects involving marketing, athletics, survey research centers and the alumni association.
