LE Survey

There are plenty of on-line survey tools. But if you're wanting to run an Longitudinal Electronic Survey (where respondents are invited to return later) then most survey software doesnt cater for that. Most surveys are completely confidential. LE Survey allows confidential response, but you can match responses to previous respondents so you can track changes over time, or before and after some event.

LE Survey is also designed with usability in mind. It was developed by staff at the ARC Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology" and is designed to be easy for respondents to navigate and use. For example we use large radio buttons (see our screenshots to make it easier to enter data on likert type scales. Here's just some of the other features:

• mailing list management - mail invites to participants
• survey completion can trigger invite emails to eg supervisors/peers
• include pop-up cover letters and other materials
• provide for draws and other incentives to participants

The Longitudinal Evaluation of the Public Service Training Initiative, LEPSTI is being carried out in partnership with the Queensland Department of Industrial Relations. This is our current large project, with thousands of Public Sector employees already taking part.

The LEPSTI project has many unique requirements, and is on such a large scale that Psychology researchers and IT Experts at the Key Centre for Human Factors teamed up to build LE Survey to handle the job.

Surveys are defined in an XML format, and LE Survey turns a single XML survey definition file into lots of html survey pages. These pages are cacheable which means that if everyone in some organisation is responding to your survey, its likely they'll have a web proxy that will store the pages locally for very fast page access. There's nothing to put off your respondents from completing your survey like slow, non-caching pages that have to be generated from a database every time.

LE Surveys has only just been released as an open source project and we ask that you bear with us as we try to get bugs fixed and documentation on line to assist with using it. Future enhancements planned include a XML editor online, to allow survey administrators to create surveys in a wysiwig environment, instead of editing the raw XML as is current.

Please check the files page for the latest version. LE Survey is released under the GNU General Public License so you are free to download and use the software as you like. As we get the open source project going you should find help here via documentation, forums and email to the project admins.

Please bear with us as we get the site up and running! We will have files available via download and CVS very shortly. Administrators and project staff, please use the admin pages to modify content or change your account.

Shameless plug:Hire us! Never designed a survey before? They can be very difficult to get right! How do you know what the results mean, or if they're significant?

The Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology supplies world class expertise in Psychological research and Website Usability. Researchers carefully design our surveys to ensure results are meaningful, and significant. IT Staff have custom designed the LE Survey to suit the survey design, and to ensure that responses are stored securely and reliably.

If you would like us to provide a similar service for you please contact us via email and we may be able to help:

• Sarah Hollings (Project Admin)