I want to create a fairly long survey for my doctoral research. The target audience is teachers in the area. I have the option of using the software my institution provides (Qualtrics), Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or perhaps something different. I'm leaning toward my university's software because the URL has my university's domain and might seem more trustworthy or legit than SurveyMonkey. Google Forms is pretty slick, though, too.
My one requirement is that I need to be able to branch based on answers.
What are some pros/cons of using one software over the other for academic work? Is it okay to do a survey with software not provided by my institution?
(PS--This is actually on behalf of my wife. :-) )
Answer
I don't think that survey URL's domain plays a significant role in trustworthiness of a doctoral survey request. What is far more important IMHO are the contents and writing style of the invitation letter as well as having solid professional or academic online profiles (as most likely most people will be looking you up anyway).
In regard to the software selection aspect, my advice is to check the following resources: this Wikipedia page, this Quora wiki page and this Quora thread. Just keep in mind that some answers are posted by people, affiliated with firms - creators of some survey software. Finally, I would like to emphasize that, when selecting survey software, it is important to consider its features and format flexibility in exporting the results for further data analysis (I assume such analysis is planned).
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