Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a full-featured online survey tool that can be used to create and distribute online surveys. Qualtrics is supported by most of the top colleges and universities in the country and offers a simple, easy to understand interface, along with the power and flexibility of the best online survey tools. Qualtrics is available to all members of Swarthmore community and has been used for faculty and student research, informal polls, online voting for committees, order forms, and course evaluations.

Getting Started

Anyone with a Swarthmore account can log into Qualtrics with the Swarthmore username and password at https://swarthmore.qualtrics.com. 

New faculty and staff users can get started creating and distributing surveys right away.  

New student users will have an account automatically created and can get started on creating a survey right away. Students do, however, require faculty approval to distribute surveys.  

Help From Qualtrics

Qualtrics has good online help available. Swarthmore subscribes to the Survey Platform, which is packaged as part of the XM (or eXperience Management) Platform. These Qualtrics Guides will teach you all you need to know to get started. They include recorded trainings and survey building activities.

Projects

As you login to Qualtrics, you’ll arrive at the Projects page. The Projects page lets you:

• scroll through your projects,

• create new ones,

• and view your survey related data.

The Projects page is an organizational tool that you’ll learn to optimize in this Projects Basic Overview.

Survey Tab

The Survey tab lets you design, build, and edit surveys. Here you’ll create insightful questions, add logic, deploy validation, apply a look and feel that will engage your participants, and highlight your brand. Learn how to build effective surveys in this Survey Basic Overview.

Actions Tab

The Actions tab reacts to live survey responses with a variety of tasks, like response tickets, email responses, Salesforce triggers, and more. An unhappy response can trigger a high priority ticket to your support center and fire a trigger to Salesforce. A student request for Biology tutoring can trigger a message to a department’s tutorial team. Learn more in this Actions Basic Overview.

Distributions Tab

The Distributions tab lets you pick from a wide variety of distribution channels. Choose the most effective distribution for your audience: email, mobile device, SMS, QR code™, anonymous link, or an appropriate social media channel. Learn how in this Distributions Basic Overview.

Data & Analysis Tab

The Data & Analysis tab manages and analyzes participant responses. The tab hosts six powerful sections:

• Data,

• Text,

• Stats iQ,

• Predict iQ,

• Crosstabs,

• and Weighting.

(If you have an Stats iQ section, this means you have the Stats iQ product. Be sure to check out the Stats iQ Basic Overview support page for details on this section.) From these tools you can view, filter, tag, edit, translate, weight, and delete responses. You can review text analytics, apply cross tabulations, import and export responses, and more. Learn more in this Data and Analysis Basic Overview.

Reports Tab 

The Reports tab lets you present the insights you’ve gathered with powerful visualizations, graphs, tables, charts, and more. This tab lets you filter data, pages, and visualizations to create custom report pages for many potential and different audiences. Investigate your Results-Reports in the Results-Reports Basic Overview and your Advanced-Reports in the Advanced-Reports Basic Overview. For differences between Results-Reports and Advanced-Reports, visit the Results vs. Reports support page.

Contacts Page

Create contact lists on the Contacts page. Often called panels, lists can be created by yourself or purchased from a panels provider. Lists can be used to authenticate respondents. You can also embed (or store) data about each participant in your lists. Embedded Data helps create more powerful reports. Check out this XM Directory Lite Basic Overview.

Library Page

The Library page lets you store pre-made surveys, templates, graphics, pre-written messages, and other files. Pull these files out of your library whenever you need them! You could even share your library’s questions and graphics with others. Learn how in this Library Basic Overview.

Additional Qualtrics Support

• Qualtrics Support has over 100 articles with videos, step-by-step guides and tips ready to answer any question you can think of.

• Experts have also written a few Free eBooks that are available for download. Be sure to check them out as they cover everything about Qualtrics and provide an introduction to Market Research concepts.

Swarthmore's support contract with Qualtrics allows users to contact Qualtrics online, by email, or by phone to get help with surveys.  In addition, you can contact support@swarthmore.edu and one of our Academic Technologists will assist you.  

Help from Swarthmore

ITS has a Qualtrics help page to answer questions we've encountered.

Qualtrics Retention Policy

Swarthmore College will maintain Qualtrics user accounts for up to one year after an individual has left the College. Please see our Qualtrics Retention Policy page for more details.

Alternatives

For very simple surveys, Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are possible alternatives.  Compared with Qualtrics, they are limited, but simpler to learn and use.

For surveys or evaluations that you will administer to an academic class, the questionnaire activity in Moodle is useful because it is set up to limit access to people enrolled in the class.

You can also visit the Survey Research Tools page on Swarthmore's Institutional Research department for more information.

Other Information

Another great resource is the College's Institutional Research team. Please consult with Institutional Research (IR) before you begin any work that might overlap or duplicate existing surveys of the campus population.  In particular, you might want to check out their surveys at Swarthmore resources page, which contains information and links to best practices, frequently asked questions, alternatives to surveys, the institutional review board, discussion of privacy concerns, survey research tools, sample surveys, and other information. If you are thinking of administering a survey to Swarthmore students, you should visit the Institutional Research page on upcoming surveys to avoid conflicts with other scheduled surveys.  The IR site also has a link to register your own survey with IR.

If you are conducting research using human subjects, you will want to be aware of the Institutional Review Board and its policies.