Survey Tool FAQs

The UBC Survey Tool is the Research Core platform provided by the vendor, Qualtrics. Qualtrics provides a top tier, cloud-based survey tool platform, developed by researchers, that is intuitive and easy to use. It has been rated as one of the top tier enterprise research platforms in the world with over 8,500 enterprise customers and 99 of the top 100 business schools using Qualtrics to make the most critical decisions.

The platform offers a wide range of desirable features including central account management, flexible sharing permissions, CWL login, experimental design capabilities, multi-channel distribution, and excellent analytics/graphics.

The UBC Survey Tool is available to all active faculty, staff, and students at UBC. As part of the academic license arrangement the survey platform can be used for all academic and research purposes and for only for non-commercial use. 

*Note: If you do not have an active UBC-issued ID, you will not be able to access the application. If you recieve an error upon logging in with your CWL credentials, it indicates that you have a CWL Basic account. If this is the case, please ask a colleague with an active UBC ID to sponsor you for a Guest account.

UBC Survey Tool is a Canadian-hosted solution that meets strict BC privacy legislations and the functional requirements of the UBC community. UBC IT has been searching for a solution that allows the University to continue to support world class research and the needs of the community. The vendor, Qualtrics Research Core came on top as the product that meets the university’s requirements and need as part of the RFP (Request for Proposals) process.

This solution is offered at the enterprise level to all active staff, faculty and students at no charge and will have features that include:

• Building powerful surveys, forms, questionnaires and polls
• Friendly drag and drop interface
• Sharing and collaboration between accounts
• All in one solution to collect data online, offline, and via mobile
• Report generation and analytics
• Administrative control

View the complete list of features.

The UBC Survey Tool is offered and administered by UBC IT. The Brand Administrator the term used by Qualtrics to identify the central UBC administrator(s) who can assist with questions about licensing and handle requests for changes in your account permissions. In certain faculties, a division administrator may also be assigned to help with this local administration function.

The UBC administrator(s) have full control over the UBC survey platform and may log in to any user account to help administer account, to help troubleshoot or to migrate survey information between instances. UBC Administrator(s) will perform these functions upon request and permission by the user.

To contact your Brand Administrator(s), please submit a ticket here.

Yes, all users are allowed to send 25,000 emails per week and the unused amount does not roll over. If you require a higher amount for special projects please provide responses for the list below and include them when you a submit a request:

1. The number of emails being sent out (NOTE: Email distributions, reminder emails, thank you emails, email triggers, and all other emails sent from within the account are counted towards the email limit).
2. A description of the project.
3. A general description of who is being surveyed and whether they have consented to participate (NOTE: The email limit will not be increased if the contacts haven't explicitly opted in to participate in some way).
4. How long the limit needs to be in place (can also select to have it raised multiple times a year).

Note: A lead time of two weeks is generally required when submitting the request for an increase as it must go through an internal approval process with Qualtrics

If you do not have a UBC issued ID number, you have a Basic CWL account. You must be sponsored for a Guest CWL account by your supervisor or colleague in order to access Qualtrics.

If you do have a UBC issued ID number, the association between your HR record and your CWL account may not have been verified. Please log in to myAccount and add it as an affiliation. Doing so will require your ID number, along with a PIN that you must obtain from your department's HR administrator.

If you recieve this error message but you are certain that your credentials are in order, please contact IT HelpDesk.

Accounts acquired from Qualtrics.com (trial or purchased) are setup in a different environment that is not hosted in Canada. To ensure you are accessing the UBC Survey Tool, please use https://ubc.qualtrics.com to access Qualtrics.

Other groups at UBC may also have prior arrangements with Qualtrics and have their own separate instances. These groups can have their accounts merged with the UBC Survey Tool and have their surveys migrated.

If you have an existing Qualtrics account that was created directly from https://qualtrics.com or if you had a Qualtrics Account from another institution, Qualtrics Support can sync the two accounts, making your surveys and data from the old/existing account available to you through your UBC Qualtrics Account. Please contact them to begin this process.

For more information, please visit the User Moves page on the Qualtrics website.

Yes, UBC users can access the offline application. For instructions on how to do this, please visit the Qualtrics support page.

API access is enabled by default for all user types except undergraduate student or CWL Guest accounts; in these cases your instructor or supervisor will need to make a formal request on your behalf for API access. Requests can be submitted by your instructor or supervisor via our webform:
https://web.it.ubc.ca/forms/isf/.

Below is a list of applications that can be integrated with Qualtrics:

• Salesforce
• API
• Stats IQ
• Tableau
• Marketo
• Advanced Text Analytics
• File Upload
• SMS Distributions
• Tango Card

The vendor for the UBC Survey Tool has comprehensive support resources in their Support Centre such as phone, email or chat in addition to self-help documentation. Please review the steps below to access the Support Centre. You can also find Qualtrics Support information within the Qualtrics platform by clicking on the Help menu item (top right hand corner).

To access the Support Centre:

1. Go this page https://www.qualtrics.com/support-center/?Product=survey-platform
2. Click on the link – "Sign in with SSO"
3. Type "ubc" in the Organization ID field and click Continue.
4. Input your Campus Wide Login username and password and click the Login button

Individual surveys can be shared with other Qualtrics users, inside or outside of UBC.
To share a survey, navigate to the Projects page, open the dropdown menu on the right of the desired survey, and select Collaborate*.
When collaborating, the UBC Survey Owner can specify which permissions Collaborators are granted.

A survey can also be shared with multiple individuals by creating and sharing into groups. If a group is required, contact the IT Service Centre to begin the process.

*Note: Collaboration within the UBC Qualtrics instance is enabled by default for all user types except CWL Guest accounts; in these cases your sponsor will need to make a formal request on your behalf for internal collaboration. Requests can be submitted by your sponsor via our webform:
https://web.it.ubc.ca/forms/isf/.

In Qualtrics, group creation and administration can only be done by a UBC Brand Administrator. If you are collaborating on multiple surveys and with several users, and want to share contact lists, graphics and other files, you can contact a UBC Brand Administrator to discuss setting up a User Group for you.

When you are in a group, you must Share a Project to collaborate with other Qualtrics account holders.

*Note: Undergraduate student can be added to groups and can access surveys shared to that group but for privacy and security reasons they will not be able share surveys to that group.

NOTE: Due to privacy and security concerns, student sharing will not be enabled unless a student is working with employees, staff, or graduate students. In addition, students will not be able to share surveys to a group even when internal collaboration is enabled.

Our license with Qualtrics includes three templates, two of which are UBC branded and approved by UBC Communications and Marketing and one which is a generic blank template. The templates are available to all staff and faculty through the Look and Feel option of your survey project.

You can further customize your survey by adding your own graphics and/or text to the survey header, using the Advanced Look and Feel settings.

Note: The three templates available are not compatible with custom footers.

Change the colour of the UBC template banner strip by going to Look & Feel > Advanced > Add Custom CSS and adding the following CSS code:

.Skin .SkinInner {
    border-top: 0px !important;
}
.Skin #HeaderContainer {
    border-bottom: 10px solid #(YourDepartmentColour);
}

If you would like to reuse these settings but do not want to follow these steps each time, it is recommended that you save one survey with the desired Look & Feel settings to act as a template. For future surveys, simply duplicate the template survey you have created.

The Survey Tool is a cloud-based service provisioned by Qualtrics, a service provider contracted by UBC. The survey information collected using this tool is stored in Toronto, Ontario and backed up in Montreal, Quebec.

The Support Centre and Qualtrics Support will never access your data unless it is expressly permitted by you the owner.

When the user account is deleted, any surveys created by that account will be permanently deleted and unrecoverable

Your data will remain on the Qualtrics servers for as long as your account remains in the system, but we do not recommend using this application as a storage medium. To properly store your data we recommend a UBC-approved service such as Microsoft OneDrive. After a user deletes a survey it can undeleted within 30 days by a UBC Brand Admin but after that it can only be recovered w/ the help of the Qualtrics Engineering team. After 90 days from the day of deletion by the user, the survey is permanently deleted and cannot be restored.

Yes, there are two ways to accomplish this:

Option 1
Distribute your survey project with an anonymous link. The anonymous link is a generic link that can be sent via your own email and can be forwarded to anyone or posted to a website. There is no way to tell who completed your survey or if they completed it multiple times - however, the survey respondent’s IP address will be collected unless the anonymous option is enabled in the Survey Options area.

Option 2
If you want to send your survey to a specific group of contacts, yet still require it to be completely anonymous, use the Qualtrics Emailer to send your survey. This will allow you to track responses, and send selective reminders. However, as the default for this option is that user names and emails will be stored with your results, you must turn this off in Survey Options to ensure the responses are anonymous. You can find this option under Survey Termination/Anonymize Responses. No personal data or IP addresses will be recorded under this option.

It is important to understand your data set and what is collected for your survey. For Non-anonymous surveys, the following type of data can be collected such as the user email, IP address, Location Latitude and Longitude and any other data that is stored in the contact list through which that survey is distributed

For more information, visit Qualtrics Understanding Your Dataset.

The Meta Info question is a hidden question that will track and report basic information about your respondents, such as their operating system and browser. This question is often used for troubleshooting or for understanding the technical setup of your respondents. Visit Qualtrics Meta Info Question for more information.

To facilitate survey collaboration, all users, except undergraduate students, can view and select other users in the UBC Qualtrics instance by viewing their name in the search lookup.

Interactive text messaging (SMS) use within Qualtrics surveys has been reviewed as part of the PIA process and has not been endorsed for use at UBC. The SMS text survey process is deemed non-compliant with FIPPA.

While the UBC instance of Qualtrics is hosted within Canada, the SMS functionality uses a third party service hosted outside of Canada for delivery / exchange the text messages. Collection and processing of SMS responses is performed on Qualtrics own servers hosted outside of Canada. Qualtrics currently cannot be configured to perform all these functions within Canada.

The SMS feature also doesn’t allow for data anonymization within surveys or disabling of location tracking, which are required to protect privacy and security of personal information.

The project team will monitor the evolution of Qualtrics’ SMS capabilities and advise the PIA team of any opportunities to bring this service into compliance with FIPPA.

To expedite sharing, we can create and populate a group in the UBC Survey Tool with your team members to allow sharing of contacts and library files with everyone in your group.

To share a survey, navigate to the Projects page, open the dropdown menu on the right of the desired survey, select Collaborate, and add the users you would like to share with. Each user can then access the shared survey via their own UBC Survey Tool account.

A survey can also be shared with multiple individuals by creating and sharing into groups. If a group is required, contact the IT Service Centre to begin the process.