Snap 7
June 2003
Snap 7, the latest version of Snap Survey Software, is packed with enhancements that will appeal to the whole spectrum of users. When designing Snap 7 we wanted to make the whole research process, from questionnaire design through data processing to analysis and report writing a more complete and productive process.
Snap 7 is available as a free upgrade to existing users with a current maintenance contract. If this applies to you, expect a mailed order form in the next few days. We can only process upgrades to Snap 7 from these forms.
Improvements have been introduced across the board so whether you are conducting paper surveys, Internet surveys or if you are interviewing using PDAs or using optical scanning to speed up the data entry process, there is something for you. In this ‘Focus on…’ article we describe the new and improved features that Snap 7 has to offer you as a researcher and how it will ease some of the issues facing survey research activities today.
Improving Questionnaire Design and Publication
Snap 7 incorporates a wealth of new features designed to improve the efficiency and utility of questionnaire design and publication operations. In particular, the following are included:
- Survey Constructor Wizard to simplify set-up of standardized surveys
- Full rich text formatting
- Options to insert images into code labels and question texts
- Increased sizes
- Automatic collection of paradata for web and PDA surveys
- Optional publication of W3C accessibility-compliant web questionnaires
Each is described below.
Survey Constructor Wizard
Many organizations are using or moving towards using some form of standardized questionnaires as a means of measuring opinions on a variety of topics. There are many benefits of using standardized questionnaires, not the least is that results from different time periods can be compared easily – thus enabling, for example, results from the study last year can be compared with results obtained this year.
Another benefit is that once set up, individual surveys can be created more easily. That is where the Survey Constructor Wizard comes in. The wizard is designed to create new surveys from template surveys found in each of the SurveyPaks.
Between 5 and 10 standardized template questionnaires are included in each SurveyPak. Each one is complete except for certain unknown parameters such as "organization name". By following the wizard process and completing a few dialogues, the parameters are given appropriate values, optional sections are included or excluded, an interviewing method is chosen and a presentation style is selected. The result is a complete questionnaire ready for publication in minutes compared with the hour or two that may have been required to create the same survey from scratch.
The 2003 Customer Satisfaction SurveyPak includes wizard questionnaires for conducting ISO 9000 Customer Satisfaction surveys.
All our SurveyPaks have all been revised and updated on the following topics:
- Customer Satisfaction
- Human Resources
- UK Local Government Best Value Performance Indicators
- Travel and Tourism
- Sport and Leisure
- Demographics and Lifestyles (included free with each copy of Snap 7)
- Housing
- Public Health and Clinical Audit
An enhancement to the demographics and lifestyle SurveyPak is the introduction of sections. These are groups of questions that make up the ‘About You’ part of a questionnaire. The sections can be as brief or as detailed, as you need them to be. There are different sections for adults, children, respondents answering for their children etc. All you have to do is decide on the section that you want in your survey, e.g. detailed adult demographics and simply drag that section across and drop it into the survey. The ‘About You’ section is complete.
"Rich Text" and increased question limits
To further improve the in-built questionnaire design facilities of Snap, a full rich text implementation has been included. Up until now, question style settings enabled formatting to be set for whole fields, such as question texts or code labels. The new feature enables individual words or phrases to be assigned their own font style or size setting, or to be set in bold, italicized or underlined. As part of this feature it is also possible to include images in any text field thus, for example, appropriate images could be incorporated into the code labels of a question.
The rich text feature has been extended to the specifications of headers and footers. So now, your company name and logo could appear as the footer for every report produced.
Great news if you have ever had to cope with long response lists of options, such as international airport codes. For each question, Snap 7 allows up to 2,000 multiple choice answers. The maximum length of each "Literal" question has also been increased to 9,999 characters and the maximum length of an entire raw data case has been extended up to 1 million characters.
Web and PDA surveys
One of the key social issues with web surveys in particular is that are often able to reach those from disadvantaged groups. The W3C( WorldWide Web Consortium) has published guidelines on how web pages are to be produced so that they are accessible to screen readers for blind and partially-sighted viewers. The specifications are detailed at: www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/full-checklist. The web survey publication operation in Snap has been enhanced to enable a compliant copy of any web survey to be published at the same time as the design copy is published. The program will even generate a link between the two forms of survey as well – so all a respondent needs to do to access the W3C–compliant version is click on the "Text Only Version" link. Any replies entered in either form of questionnaire are collected by you in the normal way.
For those of you that publish surveys online or on PDAs there is a new paradata feature that enables you to collect data about the data collection process automatically. Paradata is "data about the data collection process" and includes such things as the duration of the interview, the time the interview started and so on.
| Paradata Item | Internet | PDA |
|---|---|---|
| Interviewee ID (through query string) |  |
|
| Interviewer ID (through login) | |
|
| Site ID (through login) | |
|
| Interview Date (at start) | |
|
| Interview Start Time | |
|
| Interview End Time | |
|
| Interview Duration | |
|
If requested to collect such data, Snap will automatically generate extra "system" variables during the publication process. All effectively become hidden questions, that is questions hidden from the normal interview process. The paradata collected depends on the method of delivery of the survey. The table below shows which combinations are valid.
Data Processing Enhancements
In this new release of Snap we have taken the opportunity to incorporate two new import and export methods and options to import from, and export to, Excel and similar spreadsheet programs.
Have you ever been given the raw data file in excel format and not really understood what all the code values meant? Did it take you the best part of a day to replace all the code values with the code labels?
There is now an option that will save you from this time-consuming: data for multiple-choice variables may be exported and imported as labels. For example, instead of seeing 'Gender' as a sequence of 1's and 2's, each gender is specifically identified as 'Male' and 'Female'. This addition is especially useful for those users wanting to exchange data with spreadsheets such as Excel.
Malcolm Pitcher from Pitcher Consultancy Ltd., who has been beta-testing Snap 7, said : "the ability to output label rows and code labels, has given us something that our clients find much easier to use and understand, and for us a two-day grind has become a half day easy to manage job. A real win/win."
For those that need to manipulate data further, "join import" and "hierarchical export" features have been included.
The join import provides a way for joining two same-subject surveys into one. For example, joining a respondent panel survey to a survey of those panel members for a particular subject. Each of the source surveys would have a question the answer to which is a unique identifier. The import matches up raw data cases in the source files on the basis of matching identifiers.
Where a questionnaire includes a repeating section the hierarchical export facility can be used to derive another survey but with cases representing each iteration of the repeat. Thus a household survey requesting details of each member of the household can be transformed into a person survey recording the appropriate household details.
Between them, these data manipulation functions turn what used to be a process lasting many hours into one lasting minutes.
Extending Analysis and Report Writing
Have you ever wanted to share survey results instantly with clients or colleagues? Or perhaps you want to keep all parties involved up-to-date with the progress of a research project that still has respondent data coming in? Or maybe you and your colleagues need to instantaneously compare observations of charts/tables.
The e-Results Viewer is a new feature within Snap 7 that make this sharing of information possible. Along with the new Analysis Notes option, they enable you to prepare charts and tables with annotated notes and e-mail the results as an electronic file to clients or colleagues.
All that needs to be done is to create a batch run of the results required. Each instruction describing a table or chart in the batch can have a rich-text notes field attached. The notes field could give an interpretation of the results shown in the analysis or it could be a question to a colleague or whatever. As with elements of questionnaire design, the notes field can be formatted using full rich text and can include embedded images and fields substituted from the corresponding table or chart.
Once a batch is set-up and the Notes have been written, the batch is ready for execution. In addition to existing options for output to printer or export, there is a new option of output, e-Results. The e-Results can be saved to a specified location and viewed immediately after execution. In order to view the e-Results, users need the e-Results programme. It is incorporated into Snap 7 and may be freely distributed to colleagues and clients.
The view file option being ticked opens the e-Results Viewer directly after execution. It has an index on the left-hand side that identifies the charts and tables that are included in this file. The main body of the window is the chart/table with the optional Notes field at the bottom.
There are many different ways of viewing the e-Results Viewer window. One option is as a slideshow, as in PowerPoint with the Notes window being optional. The arrows in the tool bar enable you to go forward and back.
Another feature that makes the e-Results Viewer an essential tool for communicating results instantly to clients or colleagues is the ability to run 2 or more batches together using. It will potentially save the recipients of the e-Results Viewer time and effort as they no longer need to open lots of files to view the different batches of results, the batches will all be in the same e-Results Viewer.
Simon Copland of Strawpoll Surveys Ltd. who has been using a beta copy of Snap 7 sees "the ability to publish eResults as being one of the most worthwhile advances in Snap 7 - our clients demand a particularly high level of consultation and explanation so being able to send them work in progress directly will give us real benefits."
The tables and charts in the e-Results Viewer are completely compatible with all Microsoft Office software.
Conclusion
Snap 7 offers a wealth of new features designed to simplify and improve every aspect of the survey process enabling you to face the challenges of carrying out research in a fast changing and ever more complex world.
The improvements offered in Snap 7 really will help you to work smarter and get the results you want both quickly and reliably