Poll and Survey Services: A Review (With Samples)

Create Polls and Surveys, for Blogs, Web Sites, Social Media, or Marketing Campaigns

This is the end of our series on Internet Quiz Services.  Folks love to take quizzes, and they can be great traffic-drivers. But many quiz hosting services do nothing but mine data, and their sketchy terms tell you little about how they will use the data they are mining. 

This series began by discussing the negatives of many quiz sites.  Then it went on to identify two quiz hosts who do not mine data: QuizRevolution and Polldaddy.  Earlier posts reviewed quiz creating and hosting services at these sites. Today, we end the series by looking at Polls and Surveys. Both Polldaddy and QuizRevolution offer poll and survey hosting, as well as tests.

Quizzes vs Tests vs Polls vs Surveys

At QuizRevolution, you can create surveys and quizzes. At Polldaddy, you can create quizzes, tests, surveys, and polls.  What are the differences between these?  Well, for all intents and purposes, a quiz and a test are the same thing.  Both offer a series of questions with right or wrong answers. Both are scored upon completion. A test or quiz usually assesses knowledge of a particular subject area.  On the Internet, however, quizzes tend to refer to silly, fun lists of questions, and they may or may not actually reflect knowledge or mastery.  Internet quizzes are more often centered around personality traits.  They may not be based on any sound theory at all.  On the Internet, tests tend to be more serious and more learning-focused.

A poll is a single question that asks one's opinion on something. It's generally multiple choice.  A survey, by contrast,  allows you to ask multiple questions across a wider range of question types.  It may include "scaled" questions, open-ended questions, and/or multiple choice. It may also collect demographic and/or personal information, such as name, sex, address, etc.  But there are no right or wrong answers, and no passing scores with a survey or poll.

Surveys at QuizRevolution

QuizRevolution uses a similar interface for creating quizzes and surveys.  However, for surveys, it ONLY offers multiple choice questions.  You can share the survey via URL, or you can embed it into your page. As of yet, the promised Facebook integration has not appeared. 

Techlaurels has created a sample so you can see a QuizRevolution Survey in action.  

Of course, if you have any issues accessing the embedded survey, you can access it directly at this link: http://quizrevolution.com/ch/a251648.

Surveys at Polldaddy

Polldaddy uses the same drag and drop interface for surveys as it does for creating quizzes.  The nice thing about Polldaddy is it offers a far wider variety of question types.  Polldaddy offers the following question types for surveys. 

• Free Text
• Multiple Choice
• Matrix / Likert
• Name
• Address
• Date/Time
• URL
• Email Address
• File Upload
• Number
• Rank
• Telephone Number

Each question-type collets the associated data.  Polldaddy offers many ways to share your survey on the Collect Responses page. You can:

• use a pop-up to encourage participants to complete it,
• embed it into in your website,
• download our free iOS app and sync it to gather data in the field via your iPad,
• copy a direct link to share with others,
• embed it into an email message,
• post a link to it on Twitter,
• “like” it and post a link to it on Facebook, and/or
• embed it into a QR code and get a .png of the image to place in printed material.

Polldaddy also allows you to have an open survey, or to restrict it by password, ip address, e-mail address, or CAPTCHA. You can also require participants to validate an e-mail by clicking on a confirmation link.  However, these features required a paid account.  Free accounts get open surveys; your best bet for restricting it is to use the "Share by E-Mail" function.

Take Our Survey in a Pop-Up!

If you have difficulty with the embedded survey, you can reach it at  http://techlaurels.polldaddy.com/s/what-web-sites-do-you-use.

Polls at Polldaddy

Again, a poll consists of a single-multiple choice question.  The sharing options are similar to surveys.  All polls are public by default.  They consist of a Title field and your answer fields. You also can set the following options:

• Closing polls automatically
• Showing / hiding results
• Blocking repeat voters
• Allowing comments
• Allowing sharing

Of course, Techlaurels has created a sample poll, which is embedded here.

It can also be reached directly here: http://poll.fm/5tchv

Polldaddy Vs QuizRevolution for Surveys

If you want to create a survey with scaled or ranked choices, Polldaddy is the better choice. However, many of the "advanced features" are not available with free plans, and the statistics are not the best. If you are really looking to collect and analyze data, you may need to consider a paid plan. It's worth it for the time you'll save with data analysis. However, if you're just looking for a fun thing to help drive traffic to your site, the free plan will do. Polls can be a great way to encourage user interaction and a great alternative to a Comments section.

QuizRevolution makes it easier to embed media into your survey, and probably offers a better interface if your survey involves several multi-media clips.  The interface is cleaner and easier to use. I also like the way it embeds nicely into any website.  However, its "multiple choice" only format is very limiting.  If you'll need anything BUT multiple choice questions, Polldaddy is the clear choice.

Both are excellent survey services, and either is a good choice if you are looking to embed a survey into your site.  Polldaddy offers https: protocol integration, while QuizRevolution does not, something that may set off security flags in certain browser configurations.  Again, the better choice will depend on what you are trying to accomplish on your end.  But rest assured, neither site is mining your users' data.  They are neither aggregating nor analyzing it, unless you are paying them to do so. Your users can feel safe taking your test, quiz, or poll, and you can feel comfortable having them take it.  

Which Service Will You Use Poll

And as always, we'd love to hear any feedback you have on this post, or on the whole series.  Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or in the Comments Section below.