OnQ: An Authoring Tool for Dynamic Online Surveys

Internet growth and activity has been increasing almost exponentially over the last decade. Today, millions of people all over the world use the Internet for a variety of activities, such as email and instant messaging, shopping, trading stocks, research, and many others. Of these, one of the fastest growing is online surveys. Because of its global reach, the Internet is the perfect medium for conducting surveys. In recent decades surveys have become a widely used tool to measure individuals’ opinions, preferences and behavior. A web-based survey is a very effective way to reach large numbers of people from all over the world compared to paper, in-person, or telephone surveys. A survey authoring tool called OnQ makes the creation and deployment of web surveys intuitive and efficient, providing tools and features that commercially available survey authoring tools do not. This paper gives an overview of OnQ, provides details about each of its four main components, and describes currently active surveys produced by OnQ. The paper concludes with a summary and a view of plans for the future.