Surveys and Polls (in the eHealth Forum)

Forum Stuff How To
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Overview

There are many situations where you might want to gather data from people within the eHealth Forum, such as:

  • EOI for a committee or group
  • quickly gauge the opinions on an issue
  • improve the information you have about your members

We have several ways of doing this within the eHealth Forum, and they each have strengths and weaknesses. From simplest to most complex:

  1. Polls
  2. Surveys (internal)
  3. External forms or survey software

Polls

These are perfect for simple questions. They can be ‘multiple choice’ with a single answer, a number, or ‘choose several from a list’. Anyone can make one, and the results are displayed live with breakdowns according to profession and the like.

Strengths:

  1. Easy to set up and very powerful
  2. Can be limited to a specific group, and the results revealed or concealed as wished ‘on-the-fly’
  3. Leverages existing eHealth Forum data
  4. @admins can get you the results in spreadsheet form

Weaknesses:

  1. You can only have one question per poll. You can however have multiple polls per post.
  2. Simple selection questions (single or multiple choice)
  3. You can’t do text responses (but people can reply to the post of course)

Surveys (internal)

For multiple or complex questions (including text responses), this is the best choice.

Strengths:

  1. Very capable for complex information
  2. Leverages existing eHealth Forum data
  3. Results are in spreadsheet form

Weaknesses:

  1. Requires some skill with Markdown
  2. @admins support is needed to access the data

External survey software

If you’ve got something very powerful that you need, and hold an expensive licence to access the advanced features, this might be the way to go. Examples: Survey Monkey, Office Forms, Google Forms, Alchemer.

Strengths:

  1. Can handle very complex surveys (if you pay)
  2. Represent the data clearly

Weaknesses:

  1. Significant learning curve
  2. Disconnected from eHealth Forum data and governance
  3. Misses a community engagement opportunity