SurveyCraft

With Surveycraft, write questions once and ask them in any format—pen and paper, CATI, CAPI, Web, or in combination. Whatever channel you choose and no matter how often your surveys change, Surveycraft helps you manage the process.

  • Overview
  • Features
  • System Requirements

Save time when using different channels

A central data dictionary holds all the information about your data, so even if you run the same survey through a variety of channels, you'll be ready to start analysis as soon as the data is collected.

Manage continuous surveys

Add or delete questions and responses yet maintain compatibility with previous waves of data. There is never any need to re-define data items—dramatically reducing potential errors and speeding up analysis.

Design multilingual surveys

Display or print your questionnaire and analyses in local languages—whether in Western or Asian characters. Easily export questions and codes as a text file for translation, and use these translations to create additional versions of the questionnaire. Once interviewing has started, change languages automatically, or let the interviewer select a language at the beginning of an interview.

Wider choice of interviewing media for different markets

Design the survey once, then choose the most appropriate interviewing channel, or combination of channels, for your market or project. Run surveys of any size or level of complexity—Surveycraft's scripting language will handle up to 9,999 questions.

Decrease interviewer administration

Provide decision makers with efficient tools to access data, create reports, and automate and streamline the process of creating and maintaining relational and multidimensional databases:

  • How often CATI interviewers re-try a busy number
  • When interviewers can re-try numbers
  • Whether interviewers can make appointments with respondents
  • Your precise sampling rules

Fast and flexible

Surveycraft is easy to use, so training time is minimal. Users can switch between previous and current questions. If routing is affected by response changes, Surveycraft takes the interviewer through the new questions and removes incorrect data. Displaying previous responses or automatically adding up numerical answers on screen helps interviewers ask questions as they should be asked, without trying to remember previous answers.

Supervise CATI interviewers more closely

Supervisors can watch quotas being filled in real time, review the number of appointments made for any given time and produce customized activity reports showing, for example, interviewer productivity and system diagnostics. In addition to checking the status of the survey, supervisors can monitor the quality of interviewing by viewing interviewer screens and listening to phone conversations without leaving their desks.

Rapid analysis

Collect clean, consistent data. Questions are checked as they are entered, preventing the collection of invalid results—or use a batch data entry system for pen and paper questionnaires. Surveycraft provides easy-to-use coding programs for open-ended answers. Export to IBM SPSS Statistics*, Quantum™, card image (fixed format), or column binary. Surveycraft also includes an easy-to-use analysis tool that generates and prints topline tables.

*IBM SPSS Statistics, formerly called SPSS Statistics, is part of the Predictive Analytics Software portfolio from SPSS, an IBM Company,.

Data Structure

  • Stores only the responses given, greatly reducing data capture time
  • Variable length format saves space on disk
  • Additional questions or question codes may be added without affecting previous data
  • Data sequence is unimportant, making tabulation very simple
  • Easily merge data from different surveys together
  • Remove questions from surveys without affecting the ability to analyze waves of data at the same time

Sample Management

The Surveycraft Sample Management System (SMS) issues cases to CATI interviewers, and runs in real-time as a background schedule maker and manager:

  • High-level language needs no specialist programming skills
  • Manage callbacks for unattended and busy numbers
  • At-home patterns minimize calls to contact
  • Specify how appointments are managed—day/time, date/time or time interval from current time
  • Define procedures to process special call dispositions
  • Multiple time zones
  • Detect appointment clashes for interviewers
  • Access, display, and update variables associated with sample cases
  • Display and manually select pending appointments
  • Automatically direct sample cases with attributes that match the sample attributes to interviewers
  • Recover suspended interviews to the stage in the interview where an appointment was made
  • Create the sample file from a variety of sources: Fixed or variable format ASCII data, via direct entry from a hard copy, or previous Surveycraft sample file or case
  • Include data fields used for quota control in the sample field
  • Maintain data integrity in case of power or hardware failure. Facilities exist to automatically detach and rebuild all the indexes that connect the SMS sample records.
  • Immediate supervisor commands and changes as well as scheduler actions
  • Schedulers can manage multiple jobs, and switch interviewers to any job when a number is issued
  • Distribute scheduling functions over multiple work stations
  • Real-time quota management
  • Warn supervisors when numbers get low in the sample lists
  • Base quota failures on completed cases only or completed plus pending
  • Check quotas before and during interviews. Quota counts are maintained separately for completed and partially completed interviews.
  • Base quotas on sample information and/or interview information
  • Phone numbers are not issued for filled sample quota cells
  • Alert interviewers when quotas are full
  • Supports interlocking and non-interlocking quotas
  • Provide efficient quota grid access and management
  • Real-time supervisor summaries of achieved quota counts are standard.

Importing and Exporting Facilities

  • Import or merge data from various sources: ASCII card image, comma delimited ASCII, some trailer card formats, Surveycraft format
  • Merge data based on:
    • Case number
    • Matching an internal data field (variable length) in both data sets
    • On internal fields, duplicate keys may be allowed or disallowed
  • Import data into a dataset and hide it from the interviewer. You can pre-load respondent variables to a CATI or CAPI job, and avoid the requirement to store and pass large numbers of variables using the sample management system.
  • Export data to many different formats:
    • IBM SPSS Statistics*
    • Quantum™
    • ASCII card image
    • OSIRIS IV
    • SAS®
    • SYSTAT
    • IBM Column Binary
    • UNCLE, including TABLE specifications
  • Where supported by external systems, Surveycraft can generate trailer card formats for hierarchical data. The export module has options to:
    • Select cases for export based on a filter condition or case number ranges
    • Randomly select cases for export
    • Export nominated variables
    • Transpose the sequence of hierarchical variables
    • Convert coded data to the corresponding labels
    • Convert missing values to specified conventions
    • Export multiple response in both of the two common conventions
    • Convert hierarchical data to fixed or trailer card format

*IBM SPSS Statistics, formerly called SPSS Statistics, is part of SPSS Inc.'s Predictive Analytics Software portfolio.


Network System

  • Surveycraft Version 7.3: Novell Netware - Version 4 and Version 5
  • Surveycraft Version 8.0
    • Novell Netware - Version 4 , Version 5 and Version 6.0
    • Win2000 Server
    • Minimum 1GHz Pentium III and at least 256MB, suggested Pentium 4, 1.6GHz, with 512MB for 20+ workstations.
  • Note: Surveycraft V8 on Windows NT or 2000 Server requires Server Edition NOT Professional, Workstation or Home Edition.

Windows Workstations

  • Win2000, WinXP (v8.0)
  • Note:
    • Version 7.3 can run on DOS (min 8MB ram) or Windows workstations.
    • Users running NT/Win2000 workstations on Novell Networks must use Version 8.0 due to issues with Version 7.3. For advice on the correct Novell client to use please contact the Support Site.

Quick Links


Need more help?

Contact a sales support specialist at 800.543.2185 or via the web.


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