Dennis D. McDonald (ddmcd@ddmcd.com) consults from Alexandria Virginia. His services include writing & research, proposal development, and project management.

Google Gadget Tracks Relative Frequency of Survey Text Responses

By Dennis D. McDonald

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I have posted a link to a brief (one-minute) questionnaire survey; the survey link appears near the top of the left hand column of my blog (or you can click here).

When you answer the questions on the survey and press the “submit” button, the data are transferred to a Google Docs spreadsheet; only the time of the posting is recorded and there is no data captured in the spreadsheet about the individual respondent.

Google makes a series of “gadgets” available that can be used to manipulate and display the data collected via the online form (which you can see here). One gadget is the following display of the relative frequency with which different response text terms in question number 3 (“Which of the following topics interest you?”) are captured by the survey:

I think this is neat.

To see how your own responses affect the display, fill out the questionnaire (the link is here). After you click the “submit” button, the above display should be refreshed.

Can you think of any useful applications for this easy-to-use survey-and-display application? Use the “comment” form below to discuss.

Other Survey Questions



Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald


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