Online Surveys: FAQ
Can these surveys be used to collect research data?
Yes. Surveys that collect protected information (PI) covered by HIPAA or FERPA are hosted on a separate infrastructure, managed by the Systems Development and Data Management Group within IRT, with increased security and auditting capabilities.
Before publishing a survey that collects PI, you will be asked to complete this form: https://med.stanford.edu/survey/survey-review
What Features Does Surveyor Have?
The following features are avalable in this version of Surveyor.
Survey Questions
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Surveys can be created with commonly used question types such as check boxes, radio buttons, text fields, and memo fields. (Drop-down menus are not available in this first release.)
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If you require the user to enter a SUNet username and password, certain fields can be auto-filled based on the StanfordWho information associated with the SUNet ID. These fields include:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Display Name
- Position
- Relationship (i.e. Faculty, Staff, Student)
- Department
- Phone
- Postal Address
- Faculty Appointment
- You can choose to auto-number questions so they look like a numbered list.
The 'Look & Feel' of the Survey
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All surveys are published using the standard School of Medicine web templates. By special request surveys can be published using the "skin" of any departmental site in the SOM.
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The text on the Thank You page of the survey can be customized.
Management of Survey Results
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Individual survey results are stored in a password protected Excel spreadsheet available to you online.
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This Excel spreadsheet also includes a 'roll-up' report that gives the response numbers and percentages for checkbox and radio button questions. (i.e. Gender: 55% Female, 45% Male).
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In addition to the above, you have the option of receiving an email with individual survey results each time a survey is submitted.
Security
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All surveys created using this tool are automatically HIPAA compliant. All responses are submitted using secure http (https); no respondent-supplied data is ever transmitted in the clear over the internet. The data is then housed in IRT's secure Data Center behind the IRT firewall, completely inaccessible to internet hackers.
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The final report which summarizes the data is viewable only by those Stanford community members who are authorized by the person who commissioned the survey.
- Obfuscated user ids are available for HIPAA compliant reporting where the respondent's identity is used to correlate results from a sequence of related surveys (this feature is only useful when running a series of Stanford community secure surveys).
Availability
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The survey application is run on IRT's production web infrastructure and is available 24 by 7.
What are the Limitations of Surveyor
If you have needs for features that are not listed above, please let us know by sending an email to survey-admin@med.stanford.edu and we will consider them for a future release of Surveyor. Below are previously asked questions and requested features that are not currently available.
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The survey tool does not support logic-based branching (eg. if "yes", answer a set of questions, if "no" skip ahead). Support for multi-page, branched surveys is being considered for a future release
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The survey tool does not support e-commerce.
How do I reuse a survey that I published in the past (i.e. I want to start with a new set of response data and update some of the survey questions)?
You should take the following steps:
Note that once the original survey is archived, you will be able to reuse the URL.
How can I duplicate an existing survey as a starting point for a new survey?
This has become a popular request so we intend to make it much easier in the next version of the application.
For now, please go into Surveyor and START one new survey for each duplicate you want (i.e. if you want 5 duplicate surveys you will need to START a new survey 5 times). You do not need to fill in any information; all you need to do is go past the first step. This will
create a number of blank surveys under your account.
Then, send a request to survey-admin@med.stanford.edu with the following information:
- the number of surveys you want duplicated
- the URL to the survey you want copied
- your sunet id
- the date you created the blank surveys
We will copy all the questions from the master survey into your blank surveys, and you will then be able to edit and publish them whenever you are ready.
Can I edit a survey after it's been published?
Once your survey has been published and you begin collecting responses to a survey, we are limited as far as changes that can be made. Such changes as adding, deleting, and rearranging questions as well as changing a question from a radio button to a checkbox will corrupt your responses. For example, if you change one of the response choices in a survery question, new response data for that choice will be mixed with the original data.
How do I archive / remove my survey from publication?
To archive (remove from publication) a survey the publisher should send an email requesting archival to survey-admin@med.stanford.edu with:
- the URL to the survey
Important note: Once a survey is archived, you will no longer have access to the survey response data. You should first save the latest Excel spreadsheet to your local system.
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