Researchscape International, a survey-research consultancy and SaaS firm, has introduced a new edition of ResearchStory Enterprise for Alchemer platform users that automates many aspects of survey research.
Where ResearchStory finds the story in survey data, ResearchStory Enterprise is a productivity suite that automates survey programming, data review and translation of open-ended responses. Questionnaires are drafted as outlines or in SurveyShorthand, a custom markup language. The system then programs the questionnaire using best practices. For instance, by default, all-that-apply questions are randomized, with “None of the above” anchored and set to be exclusive choices, “Other (please specify)” responses are given text boxes, and so on.
The wide range of productivity enhancements in ResearchStory Enterprise has reduced survey programming time to about a half hour of manual labor, mainly devoted to skip logic, panel integration and QA.
“Having used Alchemer ourselves for 10 years, we know how powerful the system is for delivering affordable high-quality survey research,” said Jeffrey Henning, chief research officer, Researchscape. “And Alchemer is a true platform, with a rich API that allows other firms to build apps on top of its functionality.”
Key to any survey is making sure respondents have taken time and attention when providing their answers. ResearchStory Enterprise can be used to download and annotate the data, automatically scoring responses based on five broad types of survey activities, flagging those with two or more attention lapses, such as speeding through the survey or responding with gibberish or using the same answer across multiple open-ended questions. ResearchStory Enterprise also offers a custom utility for the bulk deletion of problematic responses from Alchemer.
For analysis, in addition to standard ResearchStory functionality such as weights and cross-tabulations, the enterprise edition automatically translates open-ended comments from the respondents’ native language to English.
“ResearchStory is a productivity enhancer for everyone who conducts research but lacks the bandwidth to spend as much time as they wish developing PowerPoint or summary reports,” said Brad Patton, chief technology officer, Researchscape. “For quick ad hoc surveys, ResearchStory cuts analysis times from days to hours.”
ResearchStory Enterprise provides survey programming, data cleansing, weighting and report creation and analytics functionality.
For more information about Researchscape Story Enterprise, contact Tony Cheevers at tcheevers@researchscape.com or at 888-983-1675.
Author Notes:
Jeffrey Henning
