SoGo Survey Online

There are many tools in the web to survey online nowadays. However, when one doesn't have much experience in this field, one might find a sea of options and you don't know exactly what to chose. During the last days that was my situation. I already started my master thesis since around 2 months ago. From the moment I stated with my thesis I knew I had to collect my own data since the existing information sometimes doesn't go much into deep into the things I need to know. Finally, this week I tried the free version of SoGoSurvey. I found in it a very accesible, flexible and powerful tool. 

At this moment I am in the master thesis stage at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development (IHS) in the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. The topic is on urban cycling travel behavior in commuting to work in the Netherlands. During the process of operationalization we have reviewed the group factors that will help us to observe the degree of influence over urban travel behavior. In this process we have come out with the need of specific data at the individual level. These types of data are including subjective and objective information in the different dimensions mentioned above.  The information required is also considering specific information from the commuting place, again in subjective and objective. In the case of the social dimension, the subjective components need to be carefully selected and collected.

Thus, the most appropriated for this work is to conduct a particular survey that responds to subjective requirements also. The survey will collect data from a specific group of commuters. The survey will be conducted online because of pragmatic reasons. Additionally for our objective it results more effective, and because of limitation in time and budget it represent, thus, an efficient tool. In terms of access or segregation we consider that for this case is not representing a problem. This is because in the Netherlands the access to Internet is virtually total (Heinen et al. 2010; Heinen et al. 2011).

After all these considerations and surfing in the web for tools online I decided to take SoGoSurvey. I checked my other such as Monkey Survey, however the price discourage me me to even start trying. I also took a look to Google Surveys, but  unfortunately this is offering only a limited number of question types (only 6). In contrast, SoGoSurvey offers:

• up to 24 types of questions
• allows branching
• Compatible with excel and directly SPSS (and much more)
• has a very friendly interface (for non-experienced like me) 
• And the best of all: It is free for students and academic purposes!

Finally , the next month we will have a period to collect our field data. Obviously, after creating a consistent and concrete survey, I will also have to contact the heads and departments form public and private institutions to successfully launch my survey and collect the required information. So, by July we all in the UMD10 course should be back analyzing our information. So see you then, and wish me luck!

here you have the official link of the web page: 

http://www.sogosurvey.com