Setup Respondents

This section explains how to work with sets of respondents in SurveyGold. It explains how to create and maintain groups of respondents. It explains how to define which respondents are used with your survey.

All respondents are added to the Respondent Master List group. Once they exist in the Respondent Master List group, you may choose to create another respondent group and give the group a meaningful name (such as Customers, Employees, etc.) You may then copy selected respondents from the Respondent Master List group to your newly created respondent group. This ability to create your own respondent groups is provided to help you better manager your respondents by organizing them into meaningful groups.

In addition to the standard respondent data (such as name, address, phone, email, etc.), SurveyGold provides the ability to create up to four custom fields. This is helpful if you need to collect identification information (such as account number, student ID, etc.) Each custom field can be up to 255 characters in length.

• Creating Respondents in the Respondent Master List

  This section describes how to add a respondent to the Respondent Master List group via the Setup Survey tab. Once added to the Respondent Master List group, a respondent may be added to a survey and/or a respondent group.

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, click the New Respondent button.
  	Step 2 - Enter your new respondent's last name and first name. These are required entries. All other respondent data is optional.
  	Step 3 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the respondent properties sheet and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder. Your new respondent is displayed in the listview on the right. Productivity Note: If you have more than one new respondent to enter, click the Save & New button instead of the OK button. This causes the respondent properties sheet to save your new respondent, clear the properties, and remain open for you to enter another respondent.

• Using Custom Respondent Data Fields

SurveyGold provides four custom respondent data fields for each survey. These can be used for custom data such as account number, member number, spouse name, etc. Each custom field can hold up to 255 characters of data. Setting up these fields is quick and easy.

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, double-click on your survey to open the Survey Properties Sheet.
	Step 2 - Select the Collect This Respondent Data tab. In any of the four custom fields, enter the name of your user defined field(s). In this example, we are using the first custom field as the Account # field. Click OK to save these changes. Note: Each survey can have its own unique custom fields. This means that in one survey custom field #1 could record, for example, account number while in another survey custom field #1 could record spouse information. Note: You can rename the custom fields at any time without affecting any data you may have entered. For example, if you decided to rename custom field 1 to Account Number, rather than Account #, you could do so at any time and your custom data would be retained.
	Step 3 - When you print your survey or save your survey in any form, these custom fields appear in the respondent data section.

 

• Importing Contacts from Microsoft Outlook™

  If you have Microsoft Outlook™, SurveyGold can quickly create a list of known respondents by importing any or all of your Outlook™ Contacts into your SurveyGold Respondent Master List. For each Contact you choose to import, their name, address, phone number and email address are stored in SurveyGold.

  This productivity feature is intended to use the Contact information you already have in Outlook™. Simply said, it keeps you from having to re-enter potentially massive amounts of known respondent data. SurveyGold automatically enables this feature if Outlook™ is installed on your computer. 

  Note: Contact name, address, phone number and email address data from is copied from Microsoft Outlook™ into your SurveyGold Respondent Master List. If you subsequently change or delete any Contact data in Outlook™, it will not be reflected in the SurveyGold Respondent Master List.

   

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, right-click on the Respondent Master List in the treeview on the left side. Select Import Contacts From Outlook™.
  	Step 2 - Wait while SurveyGold reads information on each Outlook™ Contact. A small progress indicator appears in the foreground. It disappears after SurveyGold completes reading all Outlook™ Contacts.
  	Step 3 - This is where you specify which of your Outlook™ Contacts to include in your Respondent Master List. Select a Contact name from the Outlook™ Contact List. Then drag it and drop it on the list on the right. The Contacts that you put in the list on the right side will be included in your Respondent Master List. Productivity Note: You can select more than one Contact  from the Outlook™ Contact List by holding down the CTRL key and clicking a Contact item. You can select a range of Contacts by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking a Contact item.
  	Step 4 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the Import Outlook™ Contacts Sheet and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder. The Contacts you selected now appear in your Respondent Master List.

   

• Creating a New Respondent Group

  A respondent group is a set of known or unknown respondents. You create a respondent group to define a set of respondents that you may want to survey multiple times over some period. The following steps show you how to create a new respondent group. (We will show you how to create anonymous respondents in a later section.)

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab folder, click the New Group button.
  	Step 2 - Enter a name for your respondent group. The example to the left demonstrates a survey entitled "Club Membership".
  	Step 3 - This opens the Respondent Group Properties Sheet for your respondent group. Here you can specify which respondents from the Respondent Master List to include in this respondent group. You can also enter a description of the respondent group. Note: You can access Respondent Group Properties and change properties at any time after you create a respondent group. We are presenting it here just to make you familiar with it.
  	Step 4 - This is where you specify which respondents to include in your respondent group. Select a respondent name from the Respondent Master List. Then drag it and drop it on the list on the right. The respondents that you put in the list on the right side will be included in your respondent group. In this example three respondents are selected from the Respondent Master List to include in the group. Note: The Respondent Master List used in our example contains only three respondents. The Respondent Master List would normally contain many more respondents. Productivity Note: You can select more than one respondent from the Respondent Master List by holding down the CTRL key and clicking a respondent item. You can select a range of respondents by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking a respondent item.
  	Step 5 - Click on the General tab. Enter a brief description of the respondent group. The example to the left portrays a club membership.
  	Step 6 - Click OK to save changes. This closes the Respondent Group Properties Sheet and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder.

   

• Copying Respondents from Other Respondent Groups

  SurveyGold allows you to copy one or more respondents from one group to another. This can help you to quickly create a new group from your Respondent Master List or from any other respondent group.

  	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab, on the treeview click the respondent group from which you want to copy respondents. This lists all respondents in that respondent group in the list on the right. In this example, we will copy respondents from the Respondent Master List to a respondent group called Very Important People. So we will click the Respondent Master List treeview item on the left to display all the respondents.
  	Step 2 - To copy respondents to another respondent group, begin by selecting the respondents from the list. Then right-click any of the selected respondents and select Assign To Group from the popup menu. Productivity Note: You can select more than one respondent from the Respondent Master List by holding down the CTRL key and clicking a respondent item. You can select a range of respondents by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking a respondent item.
  	Step 3 - Specify the respondent group to receive the selected respondents. In this example, we pick the group "Club Membership" from the list. Then click OK. This copies the selected respondents to the specified respondent group and returns control the Setup Survey tab folder.

• Creating Anonymous Respondents

  An "anonymous" respondent is a respondent whose name and contact information is unknown. This respondent typically completes a survey questionnaire form without providing a name or contact information.

  Creating anonymous respondents is helpful when you have received a large quantity of completed survey forms and want to pre-create the respondents before doing the data entry via Conduct Survey. 

  Note: The Conduct Survey tab provides an easy way to create anonymous respondents one at a time. Simply click the Create New Respondent button.

  SurveyGold provides a quick way to create a multiple anonymous respondents. Simply select the Respondent Master List. Then specify how many anonymous respondents to create in that respondent group.

  	Step 1 - Right-click on Respondent Master List group. In the following example we use one named New Anonymous List. Select Create Anonymous Respondents from the menu. This causes the Create Anonymous Respondents window to open.
  	Step 2 - When the Create Anonymous Respondents window opens, specify how many anonymous respondents to create. In our example, we will specify 50 anonymous respondents.
  	Step 3 - Click OK to create the anonymous respondents. This closes the Create Anonymous Respondents window and returns control to the Setup Survey tab folder. A message box displays briefly as each anonymous respondent is created.

Note: The only thing that makes an anonymous respondent anonymous is the word "Anonymous" in the last name. There is nothing more to it than that. You can make an anonymous respondent into a known respondent by simply replacing the respondent's name via either the respondent properties sheet in the Setup Survey tab or the Verify Information tab in the Conduct Survey tab.

• Associating Respondents with a Survey

  Once you have created known respondents or anonymous respondents, you can easily associate them with a particular survey.

  Note: You must associate respondents with a survey in order to conduct a survey. In other words, no respondents will appear in your survey in the Conduct Survey folder unless you associate respondents with your survey.  You can choose whether or not to specify which respondents are associated with a particular survey before conducting the survey. Alternatively, you can defer this until you conduct the survey by clicking on the Create New Respondent button from within the Conduct Survey tab.

	Step 1 - From the Setup Survey tab, click the respondent group from which you want to select respondents. This lists all respondents in that respondent group in the list on the right. In this example, we will assign respondents from the Sample Respondent List to the Sample Survey. So we will click the Sample Respondent List treeview item on the left to display all the respondents in that group.
	Step 2 - To associate respondents to a survey, begin by selecting the respondents from the list. Then right-click any of the selected respondents and select Assign To Survey from the popup menu. Productivity Note: You can select more than one respondent from the Sample Respondent List by holding down the CTRL key and clicking a respondent item. You can select a range of respondents by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking a respondent item.
	Step 3 - Specify the survey to receive the selected respondents. In this example, we pick the survey "Sample Survey" from the list. Then click OK. This associates the selected respondents to the specified survey and returns control the Setup Survey tab folder.
	Step 4 - To see the affect of associating respondents with your survey try the following:  Double-click on the your survey to open the Survey Properties Sheet. Click on the Include These Respondents tab. You will see the respondents you selected in Step 2 in the list of respondents to include. Click the Conduct Survey tab. Select your survey from the list of surveys to conduct. You will see the respondents you selected in Step 2 in the list of candidate respondents to survey.

 

Continue on to the next section: Preparing a Paper Survey