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About adenquire.net
The Idea
Carrying out a questioning, which is a fundamental method in social science research, is expensive just as carrying out an observation or an experiment.
However, the expenses for individual interviews may be conspicuously reduced by using the internet.
The variable costs (a) for interviewers or postal charges, (b) for copying paper questionnaires, and (c) for transferring the collected data into computer programmes completely cease to exist.
But in this case, programming an internet questionnaire is required, and this means that having additional expenses seems to be unavoidable.
Research surveys should not fail because of great expenses.
So, that is the point where this project emerges. There are researchers and enterprises that can not afford own programmers or expensive standard software, because they are carrying out questionings occasionally.
Inspite of this, to take advantage of reduced expenses by using internet questionnaires, there has to be an automatic online tool that will be used by many researchers, but was programmed only once. Therefore, at least the programming costs may be shared.
Such an online tool is adenquire.net.
However, the idea of this project is not exhausted by offering a cost-saving online standard software. If researchers and enterprises would like to realise an extraordinary questioning design online that will not be supported by any available competing software, the provider of adenquire.net may easily adapt special demands to the scripts and may therefore create an individual solution that will be affordable and will substitute an expensive programmer. Furthermore, a software does never provide a substitution of expert knowledge. But ordering the utilisation of adenquire.net also means ordering professional support, because the provider is not only a programmer, but also a social scientist (holding a Master's degree equivalent).
(Please note: adenquire.net takes away the programming of the questionnaire and also the web hosting from its users, but the difficulties that occur by drawing a sample, even without the internet, can not be taken away definitely.)
The Technological Basis (Dynamic Web Pages and CMS)
The software adenquire.net is based upon the concept of dynamic web pages and it is set up as a content management system (CMS).
A dynamic web page will not be created until the visitor requests it. Then, the web page creation takes place on the internet server automatically.
The scripts that are necessary for this purpose may also automatically select data from a database, so that a lone script can create various web pages depending on the data provided by the database.
adenquire.net uses PHP and MySQL as one possible combination of script and database languages on the server. On the user's computer are required besides HTML only JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which are common in every modern browser.
Any adenquire.net user may fill the database up easily, while using the CMS (within the password protected administration area), without the need to write any line of source code.
The CMS not only enables the user to fill questions into the database and to put them in the desired order, but also to choose font and background colours as well as font types, sizes, and styles.
Several given layout patterns facilitate arranging the layout of the questionnaire. In the end, the users' questionnaire will be displayed by a script that was programmed only once.
And also the script that is used for saving the responses only had to be programmed once, but will be utilised each time.
>> a demonstration of the available question types
The Product Range
To match the needs of a great variety of social research objects and motivations, the tool adenquire.net offers two CMS versions that differ in scale of benefits.
And in addition, there are single modules for particular purposes that can be used only when required, and only then, there will be an additional charge.
The BasisVersion 30 is mainly addressed to researchers having a small budget and/or a short questionnaire. It also suits pretests that will sometimes be carried out before the actual questioning starts.
This elementary version, however, is limited to 30 questions and 15 items per each question (plus space for demography).
In contrast, the PremiumVersion 50 not only enables the use of up to 50 questions and up to 25 items per each question, but it also offers additional functions.
Each question can be added by one picture (a product image, a specific scale of measurement, et cetera), the items may be presented in a randomised order,
and, within the PremiumVersion 50, it also exists a filtering function that lets the respondents automatically skip certain questions according to their responses.
Furthermore, this CMS version offers specific question types for conjoint analyses.
Please note: Not all of the below specified additional modules are available yet.
There are a few additional modules that assist the invitation of respondents or provide online data analyses.
For the foremost mentioned purpose the Respondents Management module can assist a random sampling or a census (within a small population). But the respective email addresses have to be copied into the module first.
The online data analyses will be provided by two different statistics modules.
The Statistics Module I exclusively contains univariate statistical computations (relating to only one question or item) such as frequencies, means, and variances, whereas the Statistics Module II in addition offers bivariate computations such as cross tables and correlations as well as some multivariate data analyses.
>> all services and prices in detail
The Person Behind this Project
Andreas Schroeder >> personal web site (only available in German)
CURRICULUM VITAE: born in 1976 in Eastern Germany / early furtherance of specific talents, first in the regional club of mathematics and later in a class for highly gifted students at a private grammar school /
study of communication science at university (major fields of study: market and communication research, business informatics, and media management) / holding a Master's degree equivalent /
besides studying some years of work experience in a market research institute (the last two of them as a project manager) / in leisure time programming dynamic web sites (e.g. web site and CMS of a students' newspaper) /
in summer 2003 realisation of an online questioning within the scope of the diploma thesis (including a self-programmed questionnaire) /
in autumn 2004 conceptualising and starting to programme adenquire.net and since then maintaining this project /
since summer 2007 employed at a market research institute near Frankfurt, Germany as online research consultant;
>> contact side
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