# On-line Survey/Questionaire



## Moonbat (Feb 4, 2015)

Hi

I'm working on a little project and I could do with utilising some kind of questionnaire to get a feel for how well known certain 'famous' people are. I have a massive list of about 2000 names and I'm thinking some kind of online questionnaire might be the best way to get other people's input.

Has anyone used any of the more popular online survey sites? And if so which ones did they use and how did they find them?

I've seen two or three big-ish free ones on google I need to sign up to them so I'd like to get it right first time if I can. I should have mentioned that I'm hoping to use a free one.


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## Lenny (Feb 4, 2015)

Your best bet might be using Google Forms - as I recall, most of the free online questionnaire sites limit the number of responses you can get. Survey Monkey, for example, won't take more than 100. Make it yourself using Google Forms, however, and you're only limited by the space in your Google Drive (the internet estimates that will allow you ~200,000 responses).


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 4, 2015)

Google harvests the information. If EU data commissioner realises what Google is up to there will be trouble. Google are consistently cheating on EU personal data laws implemented by democratic per country Governments.


Is it an issue that any internet questionnaire is zero statistical value as the respondents are self selecting?


How will you publicise the Questionnaire? Actually producing one yourself exactly as you want it on cheap hosting is private and easy.

I see the biggest problem as not how to do a questionnaire but how to get a sensible cross-section of respondents.

What is your goal?

*Another approach is to search each person (in quotes and alternate ways they are referred to):*
Generally
Per likely publication or other term
Add people you are sure not so famous as a control group.
Tally scores.

Not perfect, but likely a better indication than any self-selecting questionnaire.

Also a long questionnaire is a huge problem.


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## Jo Zebedee (Feb 4, 2015)

Survey monkey seems to get used a lot by schools etc these days and gets good feedback from my clients.


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## Moonbat (Feb 4, 2015)

Thanks for the responses guys, I might try Google Forms

Ray, can you explain what you mean by 'self selecting'?
I'm not bothered about google have the data, and I'm not sure I need a true statistical analysis, so I might be alright with Google forms.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 5, 2015)

A scientific survey a proper sample size and range of people are chosen.
An internet survey that people just go to because they hear about it, rather than being chosen and given an access key is totally unrepresentative as the respondents select themselves and also are Internet users, which affects their knowledge of who is famous.

You'd learn more, and learn it more accurately by searching the frequency of people being mentioned.  A survey is very hard to design properly. If it's too long then you get very biased results.  
Survey Monkey or the probably illegal in Europe "Google Forms"  by the nature of an internet survey will be nearly useless value of data.

Also Famous in UK, USA, Europe, Worldwide? 
Among Women, Men,  11 to 17,  18  to 35, 35 to 45, over 50s?
An internet Survey at a stroke only asks about 50% of Westerners and disproportionally younger people and better off people, probably more men than women too.
Who will be interested in answering your survey?
How honestly will they answer?
How do you ask the questions without getting distorted results?
How do you publicize the survey?

Just learn how to search publications (newspapers and online news sites are a start) on the Internet and tally the frequencies of mention.

Why do you want to know?


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## Moonbat (Feb 5, 2015)

Ray, thanks for the response

This is by no means a true scientific survey. I think with google forms I'll have to send the link to people so it will be people chosen (although these will, as you said, be disproportionally of an age group a geographical location)

The main things you asked about like where in the world and age and sex are included options in the survey so I'll get some idea of those details, but this is why I am doing this. Not to give too much away, but I have been through the list and I knew about 700 names. I don't want the names I select to just be my knowledge so I'm trying to find those names that are genuinely well known that just don't show up on my radar. It is not for anything serious, but I thought I'd ask people I know (on here and Facebook and Family and friends)
Thanks again for the reply.


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