Surveys for theses, seminars and research, with an analysis that almost writes itself

A chair needs three things a student account does not offer: access for a whole seminar group, shared questionnaires and templates in its own workspace, and a contract partner with a data processing agreement. The Starter and Pro team plans bundle exactly that; Enterprise adds SSO through the university identity provider and, on request, a dedicated instance in Germany.

Course evaluation follows the same principle as every survey in DataLion: one questionnaire, one dashboard per course, comparison across semesters. The minimum-cases threshold protects small courses from results being traceable to individuals.

• Editor licences for students, projects stay in the chair’s workspace
• Own questionnaires and templates for all courses of a chair
• Course evaluation with a dashboard per course and a minimum-cases threshold
• Data processing agreement, hosting in Germany, retention period per survey
• Onboarding for lecturers: 60 minutes online, demo accounts for the exercise

Most thesis surveys go wrong on the calendar: fieldwork starts too late and ends when the deadline is already in sight. This plan counts back from submission and leaves two full weeks for analysis.

Put the analysis phase in the first 14 days after registration and you get crosstabs, significance tests and export in full without booking a plan. Which means: create the account once the questionnaire is ready, not before.

• Weeks 1 and 2: operationalise the research question, fix constructs and scales, build the questionnaire from a template or from scratch
• Week 3: pretest with five to ten people, send the test link to your supervisor, revise
• Weeks 4 to 6: fieldwork, reminder after seven days, track responses in the dashboard
• Week 7: check the dataset, exclude drop-outs, run the crosstabs behind your hypotheses
• Week 8: export charts, write the chapter, save dataset and codebook for the appendix

A pretest with five to ten people finds the errors that cannot be repaired in the dataset later. Send the test link of your draft to your supervisor and fellow students; test responses are deleted at publication and the real dataset stays clean.

• Is the survey goal stated in one sentence, and does every question serve it?
• Does a person outside your field understand every question on first reading?
• Are double-barrelled questions (“How satisfied are you with price and quality?”) split?
• Are questions worded neutrally, without leading in one direction?
• Do the answer options cover every case, including “don’t know” or “not applicable”?
• Are the answer options mutually exclusive?
• Is the scale type constant within a battery (always five points, always the same direction)?
• Is there at least one open question for what the questionnaire does not foresee?
• Does the order run from general to specific, with sensitive questions last?
• Does the questionnaire take under ten minutes on a phone?
• Is the privacy notice with consent on the first page?
• Has a third person clicked through the questionnaire, not just read it?

Anonymous surveys in DataLion store neither IP address nor login or email of participants. You place the consent as a consent question on the first page. The following texts can be adopted and completed with topic, name and university.

Privacy notice for the first page: “This survey is part of my [bachelor’s/master’s] thesis at [university]. Participation is voluntary and anonymous: no IP addresses, names or email addresses are stored. Responses are analysed for scientific purposes only and deleted after completion of the thesis, at the latest on [date]. The survey runs on DataLion; data is hosted in ISO 27001-certified data centers in Germany. Questions: [email].”

Consent wording: “I have read the notice and agree to the anonymous processing of my responses for scientific purposes.”

Sentence for the methods section: “The online survey was created and conducted with DataLion (DataLion GmbH, Munich). Data collection was anonymous; IP addresses and personal contact data were not stored.”

Whether an ethics committee must be involved is decided by your faculty. Rule of thumb: ask first for surveys on health, sexual orientation, political or religious attitudes, and with minors.

• No IP, login or email stored in anonymous surveys
• Retention period per survey, consent as the first question
• Hosting in ISO 27001-certified data centers in Germany

As responses arrive, a live dashboard with frequencies and charts builds itself. Your chapter needs three things from it: the distribution of every variable (frequencies, mean and spread), the crosstabs behind your hypotheses (by gender, semester, user group) with a significance test, and charts that stay legible in print.

The path from raw data to a finished chapter is in the guide to analysing a survey. To practise before fieldwork, pick one of the public studies in the gallery.

• Frequencies, means, crosstabs and significance tests without syntax
• Export charts for the thesis, export data to SPSS, Excel and PowerPoint
• Citation: “The survey was conducted with DataLion (DataLion GmbH, Munich).”

Several university IT centers have announced that their current survey tool will not be renewed at the end of the year. Running projects and archived datasets must be secured before then. Here is how they come along: export from the current tool as an SPSS file so that variable and value labels survive, or as CSV. For long open answers choose CSV, because some exports truncate free text in SPSS at 255 characters. Load the file into a DataLion project; labels are kept, and dashboard, crosstabs and export are available immediately.

Questionnaire definitions cannot be transferred one to one. The template library shortens the rebuild, and when a chair migrates we help with the first three questionnaires. The detailed comparison for migrating from Unipark/EFS has its own page.

• Export as SPSS with labels or as CSV, prefer CSV for free text
• Import into DataLion including variable and value labels
• Wave comparison across old and new surveys in the same project

For students the Free plan is the right offer: it never expires and covers the typical thesis. Chairs and institutes get a 50 % academic discount on the team plans, limited to non-commercial research and teaching. The discount is set up on request; proof is a university email address or an order placed by the institution.

All prices per month, billed annually, plus VAT. The full plan overview is on the pricing page.

• Free for students: €0, 1 project, 100 responses, dashboard, full features in the first 14 days
• Chair (Starter): €175 instead of €350 per month, 1 administrator, 5 viewers, unlimited projects; editor licences for students at half price
• Institute (Pro): €262.50 instead of €525 per month, team bundle with more administrators and viewers
• Campus (Enterprise): from €700 instead of €1,400 per month, unlimited viewers via flat rate, SSO, dedicated instance in Germany, SLA