Getting Started
Overview: Printable materials
An overview booklet about Survey Solutions can be downloaded here as printable PDF in English and French languages (16 pages, less than 1MB). An older overview flyer is also downloadable (in English only, 2 pages, less than 2MB). The Statistics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published overview booklets in English and French (8 pages, less than 1MB). (Their GSARS.ORG website is no longer accessible, but the preserved copies are linked here.
November 1, 2023Instructions for respondents to Web Surveys with Survey Solutions
This document provides necessary instructions for respondents to the Web Surveys with Survey Solutions. The rest of this site describes the Survey Solutions software for survey managers and developers and is of little relevance to the respondents.
March 3, 2019FAQ for IT personnel
The recommended minimal hardware specifications required for Survey Solutions to function properly for a questionnaire of about 500 questions and for the survey of about 10,000 respondents. The minimal requirements represent the specifications for the oldest tablets that can run Survey Solutions. We advise to procure newest devices with the latest version of Android for the projects that expect to run for two or three years. Please refer to google.com for the information on the latest version of Android OS and for the list of devices supporting this latest version.
February 8, 2019Implementing a CAPI survey with Survey Solutions
The Decision to Use CAPI The decision to use computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) instead of paper and pencil (PAPI) is an important one and should not be taken lightly. It is a step into modern technology that may be more expensive for the first one or two surveys, but subsequent surveys will be far less expensive, will provide much higher data quality, and the data will be available for analysis much faster than when using PAPI.
September 13, 2018Assignments
Survey Solutions system is based on the hierarchy of users which perform their responsibilities based on the commands of superior users. Every survey starts by a headquarters user deciding on the questionnaire (importing the questionnaire from the Designer to the data server) and making assignments to supervisors, which can in turn assign to individual interviewers. Assignment are orders to subordinate users to take part in the survey. Not only they are directed at a particular user, but most importantly the assignments determine the area of responsibility of that user.
July 24, 2017Getting Started Checklist
Headquarters user imports the questionnaire from the Questionnaire Designer Headquarters user creates user accounts for at least one supervisor and one enumerator Headquarters user create assignments one at a time or create many assignments at a time with a tab delimited file Supervisor Distribute assignments to interviewers Supervisor or enumerator downloads and installs the interviewer application on the tablet Enumerator synchronizes the tablet and completes the survey case assignment, and synchronizes again (sends the completed survey cases to the server) Supervisor approves or rejects the questionnaire.
June 29, 2017