Asking the Survey Service to create and run your survey

If you are a member of staff, you can ask the Survey Service to create your survey. This guide will explain the steps you need to take.

Draft your survey questions and response options

Start by drafting your survey questions and response options (where applicable), noting whether each question is required or optional.

If you want to allow respondents to request the deletion of their responses, you can request that we enable the show response ID. Once this is enabled a respondent can quote their unique response ID to you which will allow you to delete responses from your survey.

Email your draft survey document to [email protected] and request that the Survey Service create your Jisc Online Survey on your behalf.

Survey ownership

Sharing survey ownership

It’s recommended that as a survey owner, you share your survey with at least one other user (where appropriate and in line with GDPR). This means that the survey can still be accessed even if the owner is unavailable (e.g., due to planned or unexpected leave).

Where we are creating a survey on your behalf, please let us know the email address(es) of any colleague(s) you would like us to share your survey with.

Learn more about survey permissions 

Turnaround period for your Jisc Online Survey

Survey requests are processed on a first-come, first-served basis to ensure fairness (fair usage applies).

When requesting your survey:

• Plan ahead to allow enough time for your survey to be created.
• Ensure the draft survey is as close to final as possible.
• We can make reasonable adjustments, but major changes requiring multiple drafts may result in rescheduling to prevent delays for others.

After submitting your request:

• We will assess your survey’s resource requirements and provide a turnaround estimate.

Factors affecting turnaround time:

• Survey size and complexity
• Your responsiveness to follow-up requests for additional details
• Existing workload of the Survey Service

If we don't receive follow-up information from you promptly, we may need to reschedule your request to avoid delays for others.

If we cannot meet your request due to short notice or resource constraints, we will refer you to the timeline for creating your own Jisc Online Survey.

Survey privacy notices

If your survey collects personal data (whether directly or indirectly), you must include a privacy notice at the beginning.

Add a privacy notice

If your survey requires a privacy notice, you must complete the relevant template and get approval.

Once approved, we will be pleased to copy and paste your approved privacy notice into a Note on the first page of your survey. 

Survey Service staff cannot complete or obtain approval of your privacy notice on your behalf. You must do this yourself.

How to obtain approval of your survey privacy notice

If we have already drafted your survey in Jisc Online Surveys:

1. We can paste your completed privacy notice into a Note on the first page of your survey.
2. We can then download a PDF version of your survey.
3. You must send the PDF to Data Protection for approval.

If we have not yet drafted your survey in Jisc Online Surveys:

1. You can prepare your survey questions and privacy notice in Word documents.
2. You must send them to Data Protection for approval

Pilot your survey (using a generic survey link*)

To ensure your survey works as expected and the results summary meets your reporting needs, it’s important to pilot your survey.

To pilot your survey, we begin by making a copy of your original survey. This copy survey will become your pilot survey.

On your copy survey we will alter the survey name and survey link a little so that they are not exactly the same as your original survey. For example:

• Original survey:
  Name: Introduction to Referencing
  Link: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/dundee/intro-to-referencing
• Pilot survey:
  Name: Introduction to Referencing – PILOT
  Link: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/dundee/intro-to-referencing-pilot

Once your pilot survey is live, we will email you the pilot survey link and/or QR code.

How to test your survey:

• Click on the pilot survey link or scan the QR code as often as needed.
• Check that the survey functions correctly and the results summary meets your needs.
• Share the pilot survey link or QR code with colleagues for feedback.

We will also complete the pilot survey to help identify any issues.

* Instead of a generic survey link, you can use Jisc Online Surveys’ inbuilt email tool to send:

• password-protected links
• unique survey links for each respondent

If using this method, your survey will be piloted using this method too.

For more information: Adding respondents

Updating your survey after piloting

After carrying out your pilot survey, based on your own testing, any feedback from colleagues, as well as Survey Service staff, you might want to make some changes to your original survey.

• Minor changes (e.g., spelling corrections) → We will go ahead and edit your original survey without needing another pilot.
• Major changes (e.g., restructuring questions, changing response formats) → We will conduct a second pilot survey.

Your pilot surveys serve as copies of your original, so you can refer back if needed.

Distribute your survey

Once we have put your original or updated survey live, you can share it with your audience.

The Survey Service cannot do this on your behalf. We will email your survey link and/or QR code to you.

The most common way to share the survey is by emailing from your University of Dundee email account.

• Include the survey link and/or QR code at an appropriate point in the message.
• If emailing multiple recipients, use blind carbon copy (BCC) to keep email addresses private.

Access your survey results

You can access your survey results as soon as they are coming in. You don’t need to wait until your survey has closed.

You can download your results as a PDF and/or export your results to another software package, such as Excel or SPSS.