Item: Google Forms
Rating: 8
Author: Elizabeth Umberfield

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As the secretary of a student organization, I use Google Forms to make ballots for voting and as a mechanism for students to register or RSVP to events. Using Google Forms allows me to collect structured responses, and easily export these responses to a .csv or .xls file for aggregating and analyzing information.

Pros and Cons

Platform is easy to use
Able to incorporate multiple media types (e.g., video, images) into the form, as well as the ability to have many item and response types (e.g., multiple choice, fill in the blank, ranked response)
Versions are automatically saved to Google Drive, which means work is never lost

I am unable to find version tracking in forms, which is important when developing a survey with collaborators or editing a survey over time.

Return on Investment

Simplified data collection

Alternatives Considered

Qualtrics

I use Qualtrics when collecting IRB-regulated research, because of Qualtric's privacy protections. However, for day-to-day data collection for event registration, RSVPs, voting in student/professional organizations, I choose to use Google Forms because it is easy and intuitive to use.

Other Software Used

Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Forms is well-suited for sending out clean surveys. They can be embedded on a webpage for data collection as needed, or sent out for an immediate task.

I am [concerned] about the privacy/security of Google Forms, and therefore question if it is suited to collecting data for research when human research subjects' protections (for identifiable information) must be used.

Google Forms - Easy to Use

Overall Satisfaction with Google Forms