The principal objectives of this SBIR proposal are to design, code and market a computer software system permitting users of Java-enabled desktop computers to create professionally sophisticated questionnaires for on-line surveying via the World Wide Web. Innovative features include a platform-neutral questionnaire editing and data collection system, a graphical user interface enabling the design and editing of complex, WYSIWYG questionnaires, professional design features incorporating complex skips, on-the-fly calculations and dynamically embedded fills in the wording of questions and responses, a multilingual questionnaire editor based on Unicode, coupled with a server-side application to decrypt, analyze and publish statistical and graphical results to any location on the World Wide Web. Specific goals of this Phase I proposal include: (1) specifying program features, behaviors and controls, (2) defining objects and data structure of the questionnaire file, 3) designing menus, dialog windows and warning dialog schematics, 4) creating Java components for testing and validating key system elements and 5) drafting a preliminary user manual and Help file. This product has enormous commercial potential since it meets the growing needs of organizations involved in the systematic surveying of customers, employees and clients via desktop or Kiosks Internet computers worldwide.
The proposed project will create a platform-independent software package for surveying respondents over the global Internet and corporate Intranets. In addition to its immediate use by social scientists and market researchers, schools, govt. agencies and corporate offices can use this system to evaluate classroom training, gauge audience response, gather program treatment data, as well as measure levels of customer and client satisfaction.
