Data Compatibility
- The system provide a power search facility allowing for a free-text search of all responses given, for all or specific questionnaires.
- The system can provide statistics on answers on particular questions or groups of questions.
- Statistics include graphing options (histogram, area, pie, etc.)
- Graphics and charts can be copied and pasted into Microsoft Word and Outlook for sharing data.
- The system supports the output of all or selected data in the following formats:
- CSV (suitable for loading into Microsoft Excel and SPSS)
- XML (suitable for a wide range of data processing techniques)
- HTML (suitable for copying and pasting into Microsoft Word, web pages and sharing with partners and the media)
Diagram 2: Question view summary (web page), http://www.political-parties.org/public/viewQuestionSummary.jsp?question_id=63867 Diagram 3: View responses in an Excel export
Statistical Reports and Processing
- The primary focus of the solution is to provide a central location to collect and store the relevant survey reports.
- Users may already familiar with industry standard statistical tools such as Excel and SPSS which provide an almost limitless range of features and statistical reports. Therefore, export features that can be read by these software package are built into the research database.
- While the online system is able to generate reports giving information such as distributions, frequency, means, medians etc., advanced analysis is better performed on the local computer. This saves researchers from to have to learn how to use an entirely new system. Instead, they simply load the latest data into their favourite program and perform any additional analysis locally.
Web-based Access
- The entire system is available via web access, including the ability to:
- create new questionnaires
- add, remove and update questions (including sub-questions and questions with responses displayed in a grid format)
- specify appropriate responses to answers
- view answers to particular questions or groups of questions
- view answers from particular countries
- view answers from particular respondents
- search questions and answers for particular words and phrases
- For security the system is separated into several access levels:
- Respondents, who can:
- View available questionnaires
- Answer and save questions
- Outside researchers, who can additionally:
- Browse responses to particular questions
- Search data
- Export/download data
- Internal research, who can additionally:
- Edit questionnaires
- Edit questions and appropriate answers
- Create accounts for respondents and researchers
- Each section requires a username and password for access.
- The web application is compatible with XHTML 4.0 and uses the cascading stylesheet (CSS) 2.0 standard. This means that the pages are fully compatible with Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera and Apple's Safari web browsers, and is operating system independent.
Direct Database Access
- All data recorded by the system is also available for direct database querying and manipulation via a SQL database interface (the industry standard package called phpMyAdmin)
- Both staff and outside consultants can be provided with security privileges to access and manipulate this data directly.
