social research software?

[nerdykarim]

i was wondering if anyone knew of good social research software for the mac. i dont really need any data analysis stuff, since we do most of that on windows boxes, but if someone could suggest a piece of software (preferably freeware/cheap) that could do the following, i would be very much amazed and thankful. i'm putting together a survey that will be printed and taken to africa for some field work, and would like to make something that looks nice and professional...so something that would let me input questions and how the answers are supposed to be "answered" (ie likert scale, free response, yes/no, etc) and would just spit out a nice looking survey.

since i probably won't find anything like that, if anyone would recommend another way to do something like that, i'd appreciate it. i dont have anything fancy: pages, msoffice, omnigraffle (though i haven't really played with that a whole lot yet...i'm a bit of a mac newbie). and i've got access to a pc, too, so if anyone knows of anything on the windows side of things, i'm open to all suggestions.

thanks for your help!

 

[ShermDog]

I've done quite a bit of survey research and I've never used anything other than MS Word to develop the surveys. I simply ask the question, then present the scale below or next to it. For example:

Do you like Macs? (please circle) YES NO

How would you rate your Mac experience?

Very Good-----Good-----Neutral-----Bad-----Very Bad
1 2 3 4 5

Or, you could present the scale, then ask your questions and leave a blank next to it where the respondents can write in their answers...

1=Agree
2=Neutral
3=Disagree

Q1: Macs provide the best user experience _____
Q2: Macrumors is a useful site _____

You get the idea. You shouldn't need any special software to develop the survey.

On the other hand, if you really want special survey software, you might try finding an older version of E-Prime. It's fairly expensive new, but you might find a good deal on eBay. You can probably find the old DOS version for PC's for really cheap. E-Prime is great especially if your survey is web or computer based.

Good luck!

 

[superbovine]

http://www.chumpsoft.com/products/phpq/

your need basic apache/php/mysql admin skills, and you need to install the software and mysql considering that you have pather. this is designed to be used as web surveys, but since pather has all that good stuff in there already, expect mysql it not a big strench to make and take surveys on the road.

i.e. the installation might be a bit techie, but if someone helped you i think you could rock and roll.

 

[nerdykarim]

I've done quite a bit of survey research and I've never used anything other than MS Word to develop the surveys. I simply ask the question, then present the scale below or next to it. For example:

Do you like Macs? (please circle) YES NO

How would you rate your Mac experience?

Very Good-----Good-----Neutral-----Bad-----Very Bad
1 2 3 4 5

Or, you could present the scale, then ask your questions and leave a blank next to it where the respondents can write in their answers...

1=Agree
2=Neutral
3=Disagree

Q1: Macs provide the best user experience _____
Q2: Macrumors is a useful site _____

You get the idea. You shouldn't need any special software to develop the survey.

On the other hand, if you really want special survey software, you might try finding an older version of E-Prime. It's fairly expensive new, but you might find a good deal on eBay. You can probably find the old DOS version for PC's for really cheap. E-Prime is great especially if your survey is web or computer based.

Good luck!

fair enough, thanks for your help. i planned to use ms word, but figured i'd try asking y'all if there was something else/better, since i'm pretty new to the community. thanks again.