New Question Type: Build-Your-Own Matrix

Although we don’t want to outshine this week’s other big feature release (the ability to upload images), we are happy to announce a new question type, the “Custom Matrix.” (If anyone has a better name for it, please, speak up!)

Like our other Matrix questions, this one allows you to ask several questions at once — using up very little vertical space. Previously this was limited to just a single “type” of question in the columns. Not anymore! Now you can mix and match Multiple-Choice (checkboxes), Single-Choice (radio buttons), Menus (Dropdowns), Essays and Text questions and create your own Matrix Questions!

Here is a screenshot of a Custom Matrix question that uses 3 different column groups.

As with all our questions, the colors (and row/column shading) is customizable. In reporting, these questions appear very similar to table questions — each with their own graph. They are also available for filtering.

Thank you Donna, Sara, Stefan and Kristina for suggesting this feature! If anyone has any questions/suggestions please let us know. We are very dedicated to making improvements you suggest!

New Feature: File & Image Uploads

Our New Feature Roster is packed with our enhancements to SurveyGizmo, but we want to make sure you don’t overlook a major new feature that many of you have requested: uploading files for use in your surveys. Now you can easily upload images, such as your company logo, and add them to your surveys. You’ll be able to include, say, PDF files for download via your thank-you page. And you can even allow survey respondents to download files, edit them, and upload them back into your survey.

The feature is available under the Templates and Files link on your SurveyBuilder home page:

Under the File & Image Library tab, simply click the Click Here To Upload Files button, and browse to a file on your hard drive. Then, when you are editing a survey, you can select the uploaded file via the Add Text/Images option.

Free account holders, have you been looking for a reason to upgrade? This may be it, because only paid account holders can take advantage of this feature. As you go up the ladder, you’ll have more space for uploaded files. You’ll find all the details under our Plans & Pricing page.

HIPAA and Safe Harbor Certifications

SurveyGizmo is happy to announce that we now have HIPAA and Safe Harbor certifications. If you have never heard of these, you could probably stop reading here, but some of our customers (or wannabe customers) have been urging us for this. These are two forms of personal information protection. HIPAA is a US law regarding health information, and Safe Harbor is US Department of Commerce program to help business comply with EU privacy laws. Some of you might find it interesting that most of our competitors offering online surveys do not have HIPAA certification and some don’t have Safe Harbor either, so we’re happy to help.

Safe Harbor

In 1998, The European Union Commission’s Directive on Data Protection went into effect and basically created a set of stringent privacy guidelines for the protection of personal data. It also prohibited the transfer of personal data to non-European Union nations that do not follow those guidelines. In other words, our EU friends might not have been able to use SurveyGizmo to get their burning questions answered. In steps Safe Harbor registration, which bridges the gap between US and EU privacy laws. By meeting the Safe Harbor guidelines we can all get along. The really good news is that SurveyGizmo had already met or exceeded these privacy guidelines, and now we have gone through the process of being able to say so.

HIPAA

HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a US federal law that establishes standards for the privacy and security of health information. SurveyGizmo had already abided by the spirit of these protections, but we are now all read up, quizzed up, and self-certified in both the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the Security Rule provisions. This means we meet the guidelines from a privacy perspective (we don’t share your data - ’nuff said) and a security perspective (we protect it and keep it private).

We fall under what is known as a “Business Associate,” meaning that we are not the actual entity collecting the PHI (Protected Health Information — in HIPAA-speak), but we service the organizations that do. We used the free and truly wonderful resource from the University of Miami School of Medicine The Privacy / Data Protection Project. It’s full of tons of useful documentation, but they must believe, like we do, that there is no reason you can’t have some fun while doing some serious learning. Here is one of their quiz answer explanations -

4. Which of these is the most important goal of the Security Rule?

A. Confidentiality of health data.

B. Integrity of health data.

C. Availability of health data.

D. All are important; it is difficult to say which is most important.

ANSWER:
D is correct. And we don’t care what anyone else says.

HIPPA Business Associate Contract

For those of you who need it, we now have a HIPAA business associate agreement for download. If your policies require you to have agreements with your IT providers, please download the form and contact us to put it in place.

Data Destruction & Privacy Configuration

Sometimes users have specific needs under either Safe Harbor, HIPAA or another institutional or state requirement. For instance, occasionally data needs to be completely destroyed after its intended use. If this is the case, let us know and we will help you out. In many cases, when some form of data is deleted in SurveyGizmo, it is retired and locked away rather than actually destroyed. In most cases this makes the loss retrievable in the event of a mistake (we can’t tell you how many times we’ve had calls that start with “Oh my god, I accidentally…”). We can, however, comply with a request for total data destruction; you just need to let us know.

Also, in an effort to provide our customers with valuable information, we record a lot of tracking information such as IP address, which can be considered personally identifiable information. If your needs require a custom configuration because of privacy concerns unique to your situation, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Respecting privacy is just good business and we aim to be the best at it.

If you have questions, feel free to contribute a discussion in the comments here, email us, or give us a call at 800-609-6480. We’re here to help.

Badges for Use in Your Survey

At the request of customers, here are graphic “badges” you can place in your survey, email or web page to showcase your compliance. Click the image to view it, then drag to your desktop, or use the HTML code to add it to your survey template or web page.

<img src=“http://www.surveygizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/safeharbor.gif” alt=“Safe Harbor Certified”/>

<img src=“http://www.surveygizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/hippa.gif” alt=“HIPPA Certified”/>

Pay your pals (us!) via PayPal

We’re happy to announce that you now have the ability to use PayPal to pay for an upgrade to your SurveyGizmo account. A few of you, especially our non-US customers, have had difficulty with credit card transactions not being accepted by our system, and we invite you to take advantage of this quick and easy alternative method for upgrading your SurveyGizmo account. Simply go to your account page and click the button “Change Plan (Using PayPal)”.

And, if you’re already paying via credit card but would like to switch to PayPal, you can do that, too. Wait until a couple of days before your billing anniversary (we don’t want to double bill you!), and downgrade yourself to Free. Then, upgrade via PayPal. Rest assured, this will not affect your data in any way.

Introducing: The SurveyGizmo Affiliate Program

Spread the word and make some cash! Many of you asked us for it, so here it is. Today we’re announcing the SurveyGizmo Affiliate Program, which lets you earn cash for your referrals. Anyone with a SurveyGizmo account — even a Free one — can direct people to our site through this program. And when your referrals sign up for paid accounts, you reap the reward: $159 for Enterprise sign-ups, $49 for Pro sign-ups, and $19 for Personal sign-ups. Even if the referral doesn’t sign up for a paid account right away, you get the credit when they upgrade.

We provide the links for you to place on your Web site or in your opt-in emails. (We appreciate our users and want more, but we want absolutely nothing to do with any spamming!) After you activate your account, you can track it on your very own Affiliate tab, found under your Account page. Have other questions, such as how the program works? You’ll find all the nitty-gritty details on our SurveyGizmo Affiliate Program page.

Lastly, we invite you to take a look at our new Affiliate Program Forum. While you’re always welcome to comment on this and other blog postings here, we’d like to see a lively discussion on this program in our forums, so feel free to post your questions, comments and suggestions there as well.

HEX for digg: A new visualization tool

So Christian got a wild hair last week (it happens round here) when he heard about a contest for new flash visualizations of digg using their API. For those that don’t know digg is a social networking news site largely for geeks (yep that means us). It has over a million users that “digg” stories out on the web that they like. Popular stories are propoted to the home page when they have enough diggs.

Data flows into digg like ants to a picnic, and they are always looking for new ways to look at or “visualize” the diggs. SurveyGizmo needed a fun little project for kicks and we decided to throw our hat into the ring with HEX.

The hexagonal bars represent individual stories. The higher they are the more diggs. What’s unique about our visualization compared to past ones (labs.digg.com) is that ours is sortable by category. You can see diggs happen in real time from those million+ users each time hex flashes.

Try HEX out here.

Ed Halteman: Statistics and Market Research in Online Surveys

At Survey Design and Analysis I am the resident survey expert and statistician. Okay I admit it, “I am a statistician”. Statistics is a big part of Market Research but I’m not sure that is well understood.

What exactly is a statistician and why is it important in Market Research? Quality Improvement guru, Bill Sherkenbach (a statistician) used to say:

A statistician is someone that likes to work with numbers, but didn’t have the personality to be an accountant.

I’m not sure about that, but statistics is the discipline that deals with turning data (numbers) into information. That’s why it is important for Market Research. Two major areas of statistics apply: theories and methods for data collection (design) and theories and methods for analysis. [It is worth noting that the design part is just as important as or more so than the analysis. This is a recurring theme with me, “focus on the design, because no amount of analysis can make up for poor design.”]

When you embark on a survey project, it is worth thinking about the “statistics’ part. Too often I find that people forget that there is a science to collecting and analyzing data. In fact many of the so-called “statisticians” in Market Research are not statisticians at all but just someone who learned the use of a few statistical tools on their way to an economics or psychology degree. My colleagues in statistics are probably the ones to blame. It seems trained statisticians always shy away from jobs in Market Research perhaps because the “statistics” isn’t sophisticated enough or for whatever reason.

It is easy to collect a bunch of numbers, anyone can do that, but it takes knowledge and experience (practice) to collect a bunch of numbers that ends up telling you something.

Do yourself a favor and your customers a favor and get some expert advice for your next survey (data collection project). And don’t forget to let me know if run into any trained statisticians out there doing Market Research!