How to Create an Online Survey Using Google Documents for Free

Create online surveys using Google's survey tool.

Many of us have completed online surveys or feedback questionnaires. Often these sorts of surveys are created by research marketing organizations on behalf of retail or service companies. Other times, they may be custom developed using dynamic HTML or scripting languages. You don't need to contract with a research firm or understand HTML in order to create a professional online survey. You can build your own survey without spending any money and with very little effort and time.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Draft of survey questions

1. Create a new Google account if you don't already have one. Go to Google.com and click on the "more" down-arrow from the menu at the top. Select "Documents." Open your Google account by clicking on the "Create an account now" link on the right-hand side of your page, or log in to your existing Google account if you have one.

2. Open the Documents home page.

3. Begin a new online survey by clicking "Form" from the New menu. Note that you may choose from a predefined template by selecting "From Template ...".

4. Enter a Title or name for the online survey. Also, provide a Description. This is optional, but appears above all questions and is useful for providing instructions to users on completing your survey.

5. Note that your new survey form has one question block already in place, ready for you to customize.

6. Enter the question Title for each question. Optionally, enter help text that may be helpful to users completing your survey. Finally, select the Type of question (Text, Multiple Choice, etc.) and indicate whether the question is required (forces users to enter a response). Add as many questions as needed by clicking "Add Question" at the upper left of the window.

7. Hover over your questions with your mouse pointer to see small icons appear to the right that allow you to either Edit, Copy or Delete the question. Take any of these actions necessary for all of your questions.

8. Move your questions to reorder your survey by simply dragging the question and dropping it to the desired location. Organize your entire survey by performing this action.

9. Complete your work and click "Save" at the upper right of the window to save the form.

10. Edit the confirmation window that is offered to users after completing your survey by clicking "Edit Confirmation" from the More Actions menu.

11. Distribute your completed survey by clicking "Email this Form" on the menu bar (this generates an email with the link to your survey form), or clicking "Embed" from the More Actions menu. Google displays a URL that you copy and paste into your email or Web page.

12. View your survey recipient responses by clicking "See Responses" on the menu bar. Click "Summary" to view statistics for each of your questions. The Summary display offers statistics and charts for all responses.

13. Disable your form (so that responses will no longer be collected) by clicking "Accepting Responses" from the "Form" menu in the spreadsheet view to deselect the response option.

Tips & Warnings

• Google Documents collects all responses and stores them in a Google Documents Spreadsheet. You may toggle the view to this raw spreadsheet data by clicking "Spreadsheet" from the See Responses tab.

• When viewing the Spreadsheet data for your survey form, you may toggle back to the form edit view by clicking "Edit Form" from the Form menu.

• Easily create a copy of an existing survey form (without the results) by viewing the spreadsheet data, then select "Create a Copy..." from the File menu. Note that the copy will have all questions but results will not be available in the summary view. In the new copy, you'll need to manually delete the data rows from your spreadsheet.

• If you want to clear all responses, create a Copy of your spreadsheet, then clear all the rows from the spreadsheet. Rename your copy as desired.

• Google Documents offers an ever expanding list of predefined form templates from which you may create a new form. From the File menu, simply choose "From Template...", then select the "Forms" tab.

References

• Google Docs