As part of the FCL Lab’s incorporation of the iPad as a research tool in museums, I have been one of a handful of people testing different survey software. Software I tested included PollDaddy, iSurvey, iForm, QuestionPro and TouchMetric/Surveyor. While each had their own unique set-up and offered basic affordances such as different question types and access to data, I found that QuestionPro far exceeded the others.

Here are a few things that I particularly liked about QuestionPro:
• Great customer service. I made a contact through their online chat and that person remained by contact, via email, throughout my trial. I was offered a free upgrade to the corporate edition and my free trial was extended to meet the amount of time I needed to complete a specific project.
• Diversity in question types. For my survey I used pretty basic questions (multiple choice- both select one answer and select multiple answers, comment/text boxes, matrices and scales) but noticed there were several other question options.
• Easy to set up surveys. Selecting a question type, making questions require a response, and branching all had to be done in separate pop-up boxes; however, once you got used to the system it didn’t take much time.
• Ability to jump/branch to follow a logical order. Enough said.
• Survey can be completed on the iPad app or by emailing a link to participants. The main focus of testing different software was to determine how easy it was to set up and use on an iPad. However, in my study I had participants who were easier to contact via email (i.e. museum staff). Having the capability to send those participants a link to complete the survey on their computers was easy and efficient. QuestionPro allows you to see the original email sent to participants, how many have viewed the survey, how many have completed the survey, and send reminder emails.
• Basic data analysis. I have not explored this feature in any great detail yet, but simple statistics and graphs are easily accessible.

There are few negative things to say about QuestionPro. It does take time and patience to figure out branching/skip logic and some other features, but I wouldn’t say more so than any other new program one tries to learn. Beware, however, of the preview option when editing the survey. Previewing your survey is helpful, especially if you set up branching, but QuestionPro puts all of the data from those previews into your data folder. It is easy enough to go into your data and delete those results, but I would recommend to do that before collecting data from participants. I have sent an email about this to QuestionPro.