Center for Marketing Technology
Perseus Survey Solutions
I. What is Perseus Survey Solutions
Perseus survey is a tool to create surveys that can be conducted using the Internet.
It also helps in transforming traditional paper based surveys into electronic formats.
In addition to creating surveys, it also provides help in managing survey results and analyzing the results data.
II. Installing Perseus XP
• Double click the Bentley College Virtual Lab Icon on your desktop (Available only if you are on campus).
• Click on the icon that reads, “Install Perseus Version XP (5.0)”. This will install Perseus XP (5.0) on your machine for you to use independent of the Bentley network. You only need to install Perseus one time.
III. Getting Started
After SurveySolutions starts, the Survey Home Page is displayed. The home page contains several links to various components of the product as well as a Tip of the Day. Fig. A1
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Center for Marketing Technology, MOR 220, [email protected] 3 IV. Creating a New Survey
Once you are ready to create a survey, click on “Create a new questionnaire” from the Survey Home page.
You will be prompted with a
“New Questionnaire” window (Fig. A2). Make sure you are on the general tab of the window (circled portion), select “New Blank Questionnaire” and click
“Ok”
Survey questions can be created in two different ways:
Using the Question Wizard
Manually
Using the Question Wizard
Access the Question Wizard by selecting Questionnaire | Question Wizard. The Question wizard will display and will prompt for a question heading. The question heading is usually a number; however, you may select a question heading that is not a number as long as it does not contain non-alphanumeric characters; that is, no spaces, dashes, colons, semi-colons, quotes, question marks, slashes, apostrophes, or brackets.
For this tutorial, type in "1" for the question heading and click the Next button to proceed to the next page of the Question Wizard
On the next window, the Question Wizard prompts for the actual question text that will appear in the questionnaire. For this tutorial, type in "Where do you live?" for the question text, and then click the Next button.
Next the Question Wizard prompts for the response style. Each question must have a response style. Perseus XP supports 5 types of response styles:
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For this tutorial, Select “Choose one – respondent can choose one item from list”.
Click Next.
In the next window, enter the choices that you want the respondent to select from. For this tutorial enter,
North Boston (press enter to go to next line) South Boston (press enter to go to next line) West Boston
Click Next
Click Finish
You will see the following on your screen:
Follow the same steps presented above to create additional questions using the Questionnaire Wizard.
Choose One This response style is used for multiple-choice, single-response questions. This is the most common response style (e.g., "What is your favorite color?"). A variant is the Choose One And Specify, which allows you to make one or more of your response items be an "Other" (or any other word) with a Fill In The Blank next to it, so the respondents can type in and specify the particular "Other"
that they intended
Choose Many This response style is used for multiple-choice, multiple-response questions. Its display is similar to that of the Choose One question, except that check boxes rather than radio buttons represent it. A variant is the Choose Many And Specify, which allows you to make one or more of your response items be an "Other" (or any other word) with a Fill In The Blank next to it, so the respondents can type in and specify the particular "Other" that they intended (just like the Choose One And Specify)
Choose one per topic (Table Questions)
One of the best ways to compare multiple items based on a standard scale is to use the Table question type. This question style is used when respondents must rate items on a scale format Fill In The
Blank
This question type allows you to collect short textual responses.
This question type is most often used to gather contact information (e.g., name, address, e-mail).
Essay Provide an opportunity for significant input from a respondent, but are time-consuming to analyze since pages of text from different respondents are not easily summed up in a chart.
Center for Marketing Technology, MOR 220, [email protected] 5 For example, immediately following the question 1 you created, press ENTER. Enter the following information into the document:
2. Were do you live?
North Boston South Boston West Boston
Highlight the three choices, click on the drop-down arrow next to question text on the top left-hand side of the screen as shown in fig. A3. Select
“Choose One” from the drop-down menu. Your question 2 should now have same format as question 1.
Preview in Browser
While you are writing your questionnaire, you can easily see how it will appear to web-based respondents by previewing the survey in a
web browser. The easiest way to do this is to click the Web tab at the bottom of the questionnaire design window. To switch back to the questionnaire designer,
just click the Normal tab. Using these two tabs will allow you to easily see how changes to your questionnaire will appear on the web.
While you are on the web tab you can also change the survey title as well as change the looks of the survey using the web formatting menu. This menu can be seen on the top right hand side of the screen. If you do not see this menu, click on View
| Task Pane (A snapshot of the web formatting window is shown). To add a title to the survey, check mark the box “Show Survey Title” (if not checked). Type the title of the survey in the box shown beneath it. To change the appearance of the survey, select ‘Local File’ under ‘Cascading
Style Sheets’ and pull down the drop box. Select View | Refresh to preview your survey with the changes made to its appearance.
V. Saving and Posting Your Survey
Saving Your Survey:
There are three different file types associated with Perseus:
.que The questionnaire file that you create within Perseus (DON’T LOSE THIS FILE)
.htm The .html file that is created as a result of the .que file. This is the file that is posted on the server.
.tsv The results file that can be opened up in Excel A3
When you are finished with creating your survey,
1. Save your file first as a .que file. Keep this .que file on your computer, as you’ll need it later to generate a database.
2. Go to “Questionnaire” menu, select Web Properties.
3. You will see a “Web
Properties” window (Fig. A4) on the screen. If you do not see this window click on the General tab of the window.
4. Under Administrator’s Email address, please enter your email address.
5. Under Project Id, enter your file name, an example is shown.
6. Make sure everything else on the screen looks just like the screen shown here.
7. When done, click on the Response Handling tab. It is imperative that your screen looks exactly like the image shown here (A5).
• The radio button under
‘Handling Options’ must point to “Advanced: Use scripts on your server”, and the “CGI script path” should contain the text
http://atc.bentley.edu/cg i-bin/perseus5.exe
• Check the box which says
“Store responses to file on server” under “Response
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Center for Marketing Technology, MOR 220, [email protected] 7 8. Save the file again, but this time as a .htm file by choosing “file” and “save
as”. Use the same naming convention, but replace the .que with .htm.
(Make sure the drop-down dialog box on the save as screen reads “html web files”.)
Posting Your Survey:
Email your .htm file to [email protected]. In the subject line of the email please write down the name of the file you have attached.
Within a working day you will receive an email with two links pointing to the survey as well as the results file. The results file link will not be active until someone
actually takes the survey. If there are any further changes that you need to make to the survey after you receive these links, please send back the revised .htm file to [email protected] indicating that this is a revision of the current survey that was posted and also what you’d like to do with the results file if any.
VI. Retrieving your Results
Your results can be retrieved at any time by going to:
http://atc.bentley.edu/resources/perseus5/results/your-file-name.tsv.
(Example: http://atc.bentley.edu/resources/perseus5/results/perseusdemoxp.tsv) You’ll be prompted to either “save” or “open” this file. Choose “save” and save this .tsv file to your computer. You can open this .tsv file in Excel
VII. Making Sense of Your Results Creating an Access Database
• From the survey home page, click on “create a database” under “Results Management”.
• You will be prompted for your survey file. Find your original .que file and hit “ok”.
This will create a blank Access database with just question numbers and no records.
• Choose, “insert” from the main menu and select “new records from files”. Find your .tsv file from wherever you have saved it on your computer. You might have to change the “Files of type” box to read “Tab-separated Values (.tsv)” and click “open”. This will load all of the survey responses into the blank database.
To update the database
• Download the new .tsv file from the results link provided earlier and overwrite it on the existing one.
• From the survey home page, click on “Edit an existing database”.
• Find the database that you would like to update and click “ok”.
• Click on “Edit” from the main menu and choose “Select All”. All the records will now be highlighted.
• Click on “Records” from the main menu and select “Delete”. Don’t worry! Doing this will not delete your results permanently. If you are prompted with a dialog box asking you whether you want to delete the records, click “Yes”.
• After deleting the records, choose, “insert” from the main menu and select “new records from files”. Find your updated .tsv file. You might have to change the
“Files of type” box to read “Tab-separated Values” and click “open”. This will load all of the survey responses into the blank database and create a new updated database.
Saving the database
You do not need to separately save the database file that you have just created.
Perseus does that automatically for you and saves the file as a .mdb file in the same location as your survey file (.que)
VIII. Charting & Analysis
Charting & Analysis feature allows users to create a presentation based on the database previously created which gives you a brief analysis of the survey results.
Making a presentation
• From the survey home page, click on “Create a personal presentation”
• Select the .mdb database file that is populated with results. Click “Ok”
• Give a title to the presentation. Click “Next”
• Select “Configure how the presentation is displayed”. Click “Next”
• Select whether you want either Charts or Tables in your presentation; Select
“Both” if you want to have tables and charts. Click “Next”
• Select Question Text to display the actual question rather than question number/heading. Click “Next”
• Select the type of chart you want for questions with “Choose One” response style. Click “Next”
• Select the type of chart you want for questions with “Choose All that apply”
response style. Click “Next”
• Select the type of chart you want for questions with “scaling” response style.
Click “Next”
• Select “List all the verbatim responses” to display the answers to fill in the blank and essay style questions. Click “Next”. Click “Finish”
• Click on the slide titles displayed on the left column to review the presentation
• Each question will have two slides Saving a presentation
• There are five formats in which the presentation can be saved:
o Presentation File (.pre which can only be opened with Perseus) o HTML File (.html)
o Word File (.doc)
o Rich Text Format file (.rtf)
o Powerpoint Presentation file (.ppt)
• From the File main menu, select “Save As”
• Click on the “Save as Type” dialog box to select the format in which you want to save the file
• Click on Save
Center for Marketing Technology, MOR 220, [email protected] 9 IX. Advance Features
Multiple style questions supported. In other words, you can have a Choose One and Specify, or Choose Many and Specify. For e.g.:
Tabs for Web preview built into the product. You can preview the survey within Perseus Software, instead of opening a new browser window:
Multiple Sides (up to 10 questions types) supported across a table. Fig. A6 is an example of this type of style:
Perform the following steps to create a table as shown in Fig. A6:
1. Type in the question number and the wording of the question. (e.g., 2.
Rate the following restaurants on the basis of price and quality). Press
<Enter> Key.
2. Select “Insert Table” from the “Table” menu and choose the type of table you want. For this e.g.
select the cross-tab of “Two Sides” and
“Categories”. See Fig. A7.
3. You will get a blank table with cells to insert different data (Topics or Categories or Choices or Headings). Click on Topics to enter the topics that you want your respondent to rate, each topic being on a separate line. (e.g., Restaurant A <enter> Restaurant B <enter> Restaurant C) 4. Click on the cells marked Insert Category and
enter the categories for each choice questions.
(e.g., Quality, 1=Low, 5=High) and (Price, 1=Low, 5=High)
5. Click on the cells marked Insert Choices and
enter the number of choices you want to give for each of your categories, all on a different line. (e.g., 1 <enter> 2 <enter> 3 <enter> 4 <enter>
5).
6. Once you enter the choices, you will need to select the choices by
highlighting them all and convert them all into choice buttons. (Highlight A6
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and select “Choose one” from the “Question Type” drop down menu on the top-left of your screen.
7. In case you want to add borders to your Multiple Sides table,
• Click on the question number containing the table under “Question properties” situated at the right side of your screen.
• Go to “Border Rules” under appearance and select “Groups” under that.
• Go to “Border Width” and enter the number of the size of your border in the text field.
Multiple selection table/grids supported. Fig. A8 is an example of this type of style:
Perform the following steps to create a table as shown in Fig. A8:
Follow the first five steps of the previous example (Enter Cup and Cone instead of the numbers under one category, and enter the various toppings under the other)
Select the choices by highlighting them and choose the Question Type.
(Select Cup and Cone and select “Choose one” from Question type. Next, select Chocolate, Cream, Cherries and Marshmallows and select “Choose Many” from Question Type.
You can add borders in the same way as you did for the previous example.
Ability to export presentation in MS Excel and MS PowerPoint formats:
You can make your presentation by following the same procedure as you have done using Perseus 3.0. If you want to save your presentation directly as a PowerPoint Presentation, you can do either of the following.
Select “Save As” from the “File” menu and change the “Save as type”
to “PowerPoint Presentation”
Select “Office Links” under the “Tools” menu and select “Present with MS PowerPoint”. You will be asked to choose between presenting a single slide or all slides. Click one of the choices and click “Ok”.
If you want to analyze your presentation with MS Excel,
Select “Office Links” under the “Tools” menu and select “Analyze with MS Excel”. You will be asked to choose between analyzing a single slide or all slides. Click one of the choices and click “Ok”.
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