Did you know that IBM has a Statistical Survey Software platform?  They do!  It came along with the SPSS acquisition in 2010! If you’re feeling like you’ve matured beyond playing around with Survey Monkey, IBM SPSS Data Collection is likely a good step for you!

The IBM SPSS Data Collection survey platform includes an easy to use Survey Authoring tool that allows you to quickly import your existing Microsoft Word survey, and it will even help you automatically select the correct question type!  Data Collection understands complicated skip and fill logistics, and you can author a survey once and deploy it to all of the modes:

• Paper & Scan
• Web/Cloud
• Kiosk/Tablet
• Phone (CATI)

You can also start in one mode and finish in another (for example: start on phone call, and email a link to finish on the web).  It is possible to administer a survey while disconnected from the system and have the results upload automatically as your device comes into a web serviceable area – and there are also options to report on the survey’s progress all along the way, as well as handle other survey administration tasks without skipping a beat.

Results can be funneled into IBM SPSS products (like Statistics or Modeler) for analysis and data mining or text mining (if you’ve gotten open ended responses), or you can also export them into Microsoft products as needed (Excel, Power Point, etc.).

One of the most interesting things about this Survey capability is that if you’re looking into working on a Big Data project but find yourself coming up short on particular data (needed for a valuable prediction), a survey is an excellent way to supplement your existing data and may present an opportunity to gather what you’re missing.

If you’d like to delve a little deeper into this topic, feel free to reach out to us!