Google Forms 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

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

• 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

• 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

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

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 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

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

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

• 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