Does anyone have recommendations on survey software for evaluations? Anyone using Metrics That Matter? Reliable Surveys? Something else?

Here is what I am wanting to do -- conduct level 3 surveys which will require the software to administer the survey, collect and process the data, and spit out a report.

Try surveymonkey.com. Use it all the time and it should do what you want.

I used MTM in a previous life and I loved it. You can customize your surveys a bit if you need to (I had them translated to Spanish),you can do them paper-based or on-ine, and the system tabulates everything for you and you also get the benefit of the benchmark comparisons with all the data in their database. KA's (the company) is easy to work with too.

The only drawback could be that if one supervisor/manager has a lot of employees participating in training sessions, it puts a lot of extra work on them... That being said, managers should be paying attention to the results. It just depends on how much of a change it would be for them.

Feel free to contact me if you want to know more :-)

michelle.sterling@buildingbsolutions.com

I too have used a number of survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. They work fine.

I'm currently conducting a level 3 & 4 evaluation study for a major broadcast corporation. Like many previous studies I am finding that automated surveys, i.e. not having any kind of real time dialogue, with participants, is resulting in limited data and some credibility and reliability issues.

Specifically people interpret the presence or absence of behaviours (L3) in different ways. Not having a real time dialogue makes it very difficult to clarify the responses. The same goes for L4 stuff as recipients are generally poor at distinguishing features from benefits, claiming features as benefits, and so devaluing the evaluation study.

I have found that initial automated surveys are great at the start for identifying a sample of people to have a conversation with either face 2 face or on the phone, where the above issues can be clarified. I then do another survey to the whole population designed to confirm trends that have been identified during the interviews.

Yes, it takes longer, yes it impacts some participants more (though had very very few not want to participate) and yes, the results are more robust, credible, and useful for taking key decisions with greater confidence.

I guess the question for me is what you want the data for, and how credible/complete/robust it needs to be for each stakeholder.

Best wishes,

Martin

Erick,

Level 3 surveys...absolutely. I use a very simple,user-friendly,100% customizable program to support my own consulting practice.

It does everything you described...plus it allows you to pull data together overtime to monitor trends-progress. You can run the same survey on each person or each topic as many times as you wish. All web-based....from administration to reports (pdf/WORD).

You can also use it for just about any type 360 survey/assessment (org climate-customer satisfaction-individual/team development...et al).

And, while I do offer the service to clients you can also purchase the software for your own internal (and unlimited) use.


Jeff

jeff@anthonyconsulting.com
www.anthonyconsulting.com