SnapSurveys: a full featured questionnaire design and analysis progam at a reasonable price
March 01, 2014

SnapSurveys: a full featured questionnaire design and analysis progam at a reasonable price

Phil Kopel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Snap 11

Modules Used

  • Snap Professional installed on PC
  • Snap Web server-based Interview and Analysis Management module

Overall Satisfaction

Snap is very versatile and we use it for a variety of purposes within our organization to support best practices. With respect to academic studies, we conduct large web-based statewide benchmark and longitudinal tracking surveys among adults across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and capture in-depth qualitative information among specialized targeted populations. Also, a primary focus of my department is to evaluate programs and services with regular evidence based results. Snap is used as an ongoing tool to track customer satisfaction with our Helpline, evaluate trainers, courses, conferences and retreats and measuring program effectiveness by tracking the level of knowledge transfer before and after clinicians participate in our Institute.
  • Snap Survey Software is fairly easy to use and is very powerful. As the researcher writes the questionnaire, the database structure, routing patterns, format, layout are all integrated. For something so powerful, it is amazingly intuitive.
  • In addition to being an excellent questionnaire designer, it has terrific reporting capability from basic cross tabs to statistical analysis. Because the analytic functionality is built into the program, the data is clean and it minimizes analysis mistakes which can easily be made by transferring data into a standalone analysis package. Most statistical analysis (T test, Z test, Chi Square, Mean, Median, Mode, Std Deviation ... can be done in this program. Unless you are using higher level statistics this package can serve your needs.
  • Snap 11 know has "Smart reporting" capability which is more complex and not for everyone but if you need it, it can be terrific. We are using it to provide standard reports, in which the time periods change. For each quarter, we can generate a new standardized report with new charts and analysis with just a few keystokes.
  • Snap WebHost allows us to collect data and manage the survey on the web. We use it for consumer web-surveys and also as a computer aided data entry device for our internal work.
  • While SNAP does a great job of providing instruction worksheets that can help researchers "muddle through" some of the less known survey features. Some of the time I wish that they could just make some of the functions easier, without needing to look at the FAQ worksheets or email tech support.
  • They provide a variety of standard tables and charts and you can tweak and save for your own templates. However, they provide the ability to change so many things, that it can be a bit exhausting trying and testing each little change to get it just right. I think they could make that process a bit quicker and shrink the learning curve.
  • While I have been using this program regularly for over 20 years and have seen the functionality grow to where it is today, I think if you only use it occasionally, it may be a challenge when you come back to it to remember how everything works. The good news is that free Tech Support is part of the annual maintenance contract and they are great and very responsive.
  • Snap Surveys provides us the ability to do many things internally saving significant money and providing us with capabilities we otherwise would not have.
  • As a non-profit, we need to demonstrate our capacity and successful results to our funders and SNAP is a key component to that end.
Since I have invested so much time in this program and have been using SNAP Surveys since around 1990, I honestly have not focused that much on other competing software programs. The little bit that I have seen is that some popular web-survey programs (like Survey Monkey) may have nice looking front end features but limited analysis capabilities and SPSS has strong analysis capabilities but is not a strong questionnaire designer.
I think this program does everything that I need in a survey software and analysis program. The price point seems quite good and as I have said it has a lot of capability. While I never looked at the very expensive high end programs in the $50,000 + range, I cannot imagine what more they could do.
I think it is very important to go through their training videos and user guides. Devote the time to learning it correctly from the beginning. In the long run you will enjoy it much more than plowing right into it and then trying to find out if you did it right. Also, while you are not required to buy the annual maintenance contract, I think if you are going to use the program, don't skimp, buy the annual maintenance contract. The free technical support is necessary, especially when you are up against deadlines.