Online Survey Tools
There are mainly two ways you can develop an online survey and it is recommended that you use a software that provides access to professionally designed survey templates.
1) Do it yourself Do-it-yourself is for people who are fairly competent with using HTML, PHP and MySQL or you have easy access to someone who is competent and will understand design of your questionnaire. Being able to use the technology is not the only hurdle. It is important to think about logic behind the questions. For example, a particular question needs to be answered if the participant is "male" and above age 18. The form should be designed such that it takes the user to that specific question. It is also important to think about how the data from the questionnaire will be extracted for analysis.
2) Off the shelf tools For most people it is recommended to use the off-the-shelf tools. These tools are built for people who are not familiar with the above technology and guide user to build a professional looking web based questionnaire. Some of the options are available to purchase outright where the user installs the software on their web server and is responsible for maintaining the data and updating the software. Others are available as Software as a service (SaaS) where the purchaser/user pays a monthly (or quarterly or yearly) fee to use the software that is maintained by the software provider on its servers. It is advisable to build a simple questionnaire before building the final one.
Read more about this topic: Computer-assisted Web Interviewing
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