Google Forms vs. QuestionPro vs. REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture)

Google Forms is great for simple surveys, such as quick polls, but any logic beyond conditional pages is not supported. Google Forms is best used when the survey participants have and are permitted to use a Google Account to fill out the form; we ran into issues with hospital IT departments. I don't believe there's a better free tool out there than Google Forms, though.

Incentivized

QuestionPro is great for forced-choice and Likert-scale data, and it easily turns raw data into readable statistics. The simple interface lacks attractiveness but is easy to learn and use, even for members outside the digital age. QuestionPro is less effective for qualitative data and short answer responses in large quantities. Reporting and analytic features leave this information in the bulky design, clogging the report and preventing cohesive presentation of the data.

Incentivized

REDCap surveys are very suitable for clinical trials and public health surveys. It's less appropriate for market researches .

• Live results: When a user completes the form the results are added instantly.
• Easy to create: Google Forms has a simple interface that allows for a wide range of question types. Google will even try to guess the question type based on the question (but this can be overridden).
• Answers export to Google Sheets: It is easy to have each response to your form add a row to a Google Sheet, allowing for further analysis or processing.
• Ability to automatically collect email addresses within a domain: If you have a form that has been shared with users in your domain, you can set it to automatically collect the users' email addresses without them needing to type it in. Makes checking whether all students have completed the form easy.

Incentivized

• Before choosing QuestionPro, we evaluated it and Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo, and SurveyMonkey. A committee tested each of 141 key features on all four products. QuestionPro did well in the comparison and we have ended up using even more features that we tested. The summary of that work can be found here: https://oit.utk.edu/research/documentation/qualtrics-to-questionpro/.
• The way it handles anonymous surveys is particularly good. With most products, you have to remember to check the "anonymous" box to prevent it from saving email addresses or other identifiable data. But if you forget to do so, you can't tell by taking the survey. Question pro uses "Respondent Anonymity Assurance" that must be turned on by the company (a quick request from the chat window will suffice) and then it can never be turned off. This activates a link that appears on the bottom left-hand of each survey page. Clicking it takes the survey participant to a company page which assures them that the anonymous feature is indeed turned on.
• It has a very nice combination of great power and ease of use.
• The support we have received from the company has been excellent. Our team has worked with around 30 research software vendors for over 35 years and this company stands out as being extremely responsive to our needs. We told them we needed a migration tool to help us move from Qualtrics to QuestionPro and they created one in just a few weeks. They've added or improved a number of other features for us, at no charge.

• Customization. I can use HTML to change format but there are also a ton of built in functionality for branching logic, matrix configuration, slider scales, etc.
• Security. HIPPA compliance is extremely important for medical research and REDCap ensures our data is safe.
• Variety of use. Being able to send both surveys and create forms for internal use makes the use cases numerous.

Incentivized

• Sometimes finding the output -- a Google Sheet with all responses-- is a little difficult. It's also sometimes confusing to figure out how to get back into the Google Form Survey itself.
• As always, sharing among an institutional Google account and your personal Google account can be frustrating. You have to make a copy and can't share across the two different accounts very easily.

Incentivized

• The current user interface for designing and editing questions is truly awful. A big step backwards from earlier user interfaces which were great.
• Customer support is not very helpful.
• Results of survey are not exported in a way that is easy to translate into R data frame.

• I don't really see many issues with REDCap.

Incentivized

I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner

Incentivized

It's a fine product, but it's also a very competitive field, so it wouldn't take much to knock QuestionPro from top tier status. I would like to see more functionality in all programs, so whichever program does that first is likely to get my money in the next round of budgeting.

Overall ease of use for staff, volunteers, and adult learners, and easy to get reports and to share reports via Sheets. As a free tool, it does more than expected. Easy to change the look and brand it to your organization, or just make it more fun, depending on what you want to use it for.

Incentivized

QuestionPro is very easy to use. There are lots of question types and drag and drop functionality. There are lots of ways that make the platform easy to use

It is very interesting to me especially that it meets all my needs. The libraries makes the job even much easier, since you can just make a few adjustments to the appropriate template chosen

In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms

Incentivized

One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things.

Incentivized

We haven't used much official support for Google Forms. However, because it is so widely used, there are a ton of articles and guides available online to help administrators of varying technical abilities to work through problems that arise. Additionally, Google provides an official support forum where there are discussions with other users as well as Google developers that can help address issues if needed.

Incentivized

They offer email, chat, and phone support. I have used the chat support several times. Response time was fast, but the rep did not always have the answer. Inquiries are answered quickly and thoroughly.

They respond almost immediately to queries

Google Forms doesn't really require "implementation": simply log into GDrive and create a survey! You can configure settings per survey to, for example, automatically write responses to a GSheet.

Incentivized

Try every feature and test take your surveys multiple times, running through different scenarios.

Although both platforms offer similar functionalities, Google Form has a personal advantage and it is the impeccable integration with the different applications of the Google suite, this allows to make use of all of them in a transparent way, which in the work environment allows to perform work efficiently and without affecting the quality of it.

Incentivized

First of all, QuestionPro has powerful futures when we compare it with others. I am not sure but somehow interface of the product is always important for some more than its functionality. QuestionPro has many features, functionality and has a great interface. It is easy to use and a software that is easy to understand.

Incentivized

SurveyMonkey and Google Forms have similar features for surveys but they lack the form options and user interface. They are also not HIPPA compliant so we are not able to collect any identifying information which is usually an issue in research when we are tracking participants. Many institutional review boards won't even approve a study without a HIPPA compliant data collection service.

Incentivized

GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job.

Incentivized

• High positive impact and return of investment; easy to use and seamlessly integrated with current Google Drive and Suite
• Ability to create surveys on demand and quickly, saving time and energy
• Easy to train others in using Google Forms so that there is not a bottleneck of knowledge

Incentivized

• QuestionPro is being used to automate surveys that were previously done by hand. We would not have been able to do this without the anonymous tracking feature. It has cut turnaround of reports by more than half.
• This is of course more efficient, but this could be expected of any software that automates a survey for you.

• REDCap allowed us to house all patient information in one single portal which helped us eliminate the need for paper copies. We moved our whole filing system to an electronic version when we became "live" on REDCap. It is also very convenient and accessible to have all of this data in one location.
• A very positive impact is the ability for multiple users to see the same health and wellness information for each specific patient. Instead of constantly having to go back and forth via email, phone, etc. to ask about the patient; we could simply look up their information in REDCap and find all of the answers. It made our business much more efficient and made the patients feel as though we did our research prior to meeting with them.

Incentivized