Current Questionnaire Generation Tools - A Market and Product Overview

ABSTRACT

The paper mainly focuses on current questionnaire generation tools on the German- speaking market. Additionally, an introduction to internet-based research is given in Part One of this paper that will explain the differences between online surveys and online experiments and the choices of when and when not to conduct an experiment on the internet. It will also shortly introduce advantages and disadvantages of online research as well as the current standards that have been derived so far.

Part Two of the paper gives a short market analysis on the market of questionnaire generation tools with its suppliers and demanders, explaining the past and current development of the market as well as its future trend.

The main focus lies on the product analysis in Part Three. Comparative features that will be looked upon when analyzing different products will be derived from the standards, introduced in Part One of this paper. A choice of current suppliers and their products will be represented and the positioning of their products within the market explained. Two favored products are then compared in more detail according to features, usability and pricing scheme, presenting a short result from the comparison thereafter.

A summary will be given at the end that will recapitulate the results from the paper.

  i  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  I INTRODUCTION  1

  II INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH AN INTRODUCTION  2

1.  INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH PROJECTS  2

  i Online Surveys  3

  ii Online Experiments  3

2.  THE CHOICE OF WHEN TO CONDUCT AN EXPERIMENT ONLINE  4

3.  ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF ONLINE RESEARCH  4

4.  STANDARDS FOR ONLINE RESEARCH  5

  III MARKET ANALYSIS  8

1.  PAST MARKET DEVELOPMENT  8

2.  CURRENT MARKET STATE  9

  i Supply side  9

  ii Demand side  10

3.  TRENDS  11

  IV PRODUCT ANALYSIS  13

1.  COMPARATIVE FEATURES  13

2.  CURRENT SUPPLIERS AND THEIR PRODUCTS  15

3.  ANALYZING PERFORMANCE VIA SCORE POINTS  21

4.  PRODUCT POSITIONING  24

5.  GLOBALPARK VERSUS ASK4MORE A COMPARISON  25

  a Features  25

  b Usability  26

  c Pricing scheme  28

  d Outcome  29

  V SUMMARY  30

APPENDIX................................................................................................................................... 31  NA  

  REFERENCES  35

  ii  

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:  Evaluated Products 14  

Table 2.1:  Technical features 16  

Table 2.2:  Technical features 17  

Table 3:  Business features 18  

  iii  

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Figure 1: Results of score points per level of functionality 20  

  Figure 2: Results of overall score points compared with maximum 21  

  Figure 3: Portfolio map of product positioning 22  

  Figure 4: ask4more s GUI (trial  version)………………………………………………..…25

  Figure 5: Globalpark s GUI (demo  version)..................................................................25

  iv  

LIST OF ABBREVEATIONS

  ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e V  

  Working Circle of German Market- and Social Research  Institutes]

  ASI Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e V  

  Working group of social-scientific  Institutes]

  BVM Berufsverband Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforscher e V  

  Association of German Market- and Social Researchers  

  DGOF Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung e V (D G O F )  

  German Society for Online Research  

  NEON Network Online Research  

  OSS Online Survey System  

  EITO European Information Technology Observatory  

  ICT Information and Communication Technology  

  GUI Graphical User  Interface

  VAT Value Added Tax  

I. INTRODUCTION

Adapting to Stephen W. Hawking’s illustrative metaphor of the universe put into a nutshell 1 , one could envision the world encrypted into the internet. There is nothing in

the real world, where its interactive counterpart could not be found in the endless network of the World Wide Web – may it be obvious or hidden. Despite the early stages of the internet’s preceding forms in the 1970s, today’s internet especially experienced a tremendously fast development during the last decade, becoming a medium of the masses for the masses. User statistics are constantly rising and even if, in the early stages, the internet user was in average of higher education, English speaking and male, he is now a counterpart of the inhabitant of the real word. The internet is a medium for everybody. Statistics 2 show an ever growing participation. Of

course, there are still demographic deviations from the real-world counterpart. However, considering the German-speaking regions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland only, demography and social status hardly differ, thus making the region quite homogenous. Data 3 for Germany subsequently estimates a high current digital

media universe of over 55% of the current population, with an active digital media usage of about 39%, where females account for 41%, teenagers below the age of 18 represent about 10% and people of 55 years of age or older, account for 14.5% of all internet users. As a consequence, the reason for social scientists and marketing researchers to discover the internet as a new research medium is quite obvious.

Online-Research in the German-speaking region still has a young but already moving history behind. It started off with simple HTML-programming and continued, accordingly to the overall technical development, to derive standards and rules for quality, reliability and validity. A new market developed, providing software tools for the development of online surveys and experiments due to more complex programming languages. The main characteristic of the new market: lacking transparency.

1 See Hawkings, S. (2004): Das Universum in der Nussschale. dtv.

2 See Nielsen//NetRatings (2002): Europäische Internet Nutzung Januar 2002.

3 See Nielsen//NetRatings: NetView Usage Metrics: (January 2006) http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to&country=ge (Home Panel, Web Usage Data)

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II. INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH – AN INTRODUCTION

1. Internet-based research projects

In the beginning of the mid-nineties of the 20 th century, using the World Wide Web as a

method of research was the choice of only a small number of first movers among experimental researchers. Ten years later “we are in the midst of an Internet revolution in experimental research” (Reips, 2002a, p.243). However, what does “internet-based research” mean? To begin with, it is important to mention that several terms are used simultaneously: web research, online research, internet research, web-based research, World Wide Web research. Historically, as for the example of the term “web experiments”, the term “web” was the first term used. On the other hand, the terms “internet-based research” or “internet-based experiments” do also include internet services such as e-mail, telnet, ftp or messengers for communication (e.g. ICQ, MSN Messenger) that are no web services as such due to their definition and functionality. What this paper focuses on, is research done in the World Wide Web via a web browser using the web as the underlying tool. However, due to the fact that many authors use the term “online” for describing the above mentioned version of research, this paper will adapt this term analogously. In the further paper “online research”, “online surveys” and “online experiments” will thus refer to research, surveys or experiments conducted in the World Wide Web using the web with the help of a web browser.

The history of online research is strongly tied with the development and success of the internet. Attributable to the development of the number of internet users, the critical mass, necessary to conduct experiments in order to achieve a validity that coincides with the sociography and demography of the real world, was reached 4 . Due to the fact

that research objects could now be recruited in a large amount within a short time, in order to be interviewed and from which to derive data, the entrance barriers for professional and empirical research sank and allowed research within a wider range. Subsequently, the internet and especially the World Wide Web with all its occurring 4 See Introduction of this paper.

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social processes did not only become the subject of research, but a research method itself.

As mentioned before, online research can be conducted in different ways. According to Reips 5 , there are three main possibilities to collect data online that will allow

conclusions to be drawn on the behavior of humans: none-reactive data collection, online surveys and online experiments. The last two mentioned will be looked upon further.

i. Online Surveys

Online Surveys, as none-experimental methods, are the most commonly used technique for online research. They are not only used by research institutes for professional, empirical research but mostly by market researchers or online-marketing experts. Surveys are an every-day fly by when surfing the internet, either as pop-ups, via e-mail or posted on a website in an either plain HTML or using Java script and Flash. Their purpose is defined as a “systematic gathering of information from respondents for the purpose of understanding and/or predicting some aspect of the behavior of the population of interest” (Tull, 1993). The frequent use of surveys is explained by the “ease” with that they can be “constructed, conducted, and evaluated” (Reips 2002b, p.230). This ease, however, still needs to be looked upon in the preceding parts of this paper. Moreover, online surveys do not necessarily need to have a scientific background; they mostly have a commercial one. However, especially for validity there are rules and standards to be considered that apply to surveys as well as to other forms of online research such as experiments.

ii. Online Experiments

According to Reips, online experiments have an advantage over online surveys or other methods of data collection via the internet, “because of their ability in proving causal relationships between variables” (Reips 2002b, p.229). Online experiments are the new and third from of experiments, that existed as laboratory and field experiments 5 See Reips, U.-D. (2002): Theory and techniques of Web experimenting.