Abstract:

Research surveying has been serving as an important instrument in education to assess the endeavours of educators, researchers and students after an innovation or new pedagogy is implemented in the educational environment. However, a number of problems are often encountered by researchers in conducting research surveying before the popularity of Internet. For instance, printing and distributing paper version of surveys, data verification and data cleaning. Such activities affect the research projects adversely in terms of time, resource and cost. Emerge of Internet technology brings about a favourable approach for researchers to access subjects easily and conduct evaluation in an effective and efficient manner. By making use of Internet technology, a web survey system becomes an encouraging idea for the researchers to conduct evaluation in their pedagogical projects.

However, references in analysing an effective web survey system are limited. The available information is either too general or insufficient for a comprehensive analysis. Through assessing nine web survey systems in the market, this paper intends to propose several key criteria to evaluate a web survey system in a practical, comprehensive and cost-effective manner. These criteria are composed of aspects in web survey system design in terms of architecture design, survey workflow processes and system features. Moreover, integration flexibility, system robustness, and service support also constituted as major aspects in the criteria. Finally, Feedback System was chosen as the most suitable and cost-effective system for our institution after applying the criteria in the screening processes.

Keywords:

Web survey, web-based survey, web survey system, web survey and reporting system, web survey system selection criteria.