Qualtrics: Online Survey and Form Tool

Note: Qualtrics does not do complex approval workflows. If you are making a form, you'll usually use Qualtrics! But if you are making a form that should be sent for approval and kept in the form itself (e.g. a research request form that will be sent to the department head to approve and pass forward), use Kuali Build.

Qualtrics is an easy to use and HIPAA compliant tool for creating and conducting online surveys, forms, polls, and quizzes. Example functionality includes:

  • Create a form that users can fill out to request a new computer or affiliate account.
  • Create a complex research survey to distribute in the field with advanced logic, showing specific questions to different participants.
  • View or export individual responses in a spreadsheet, SPSS, Tableau, and more.
  • Create visualizations (bar charts, tables, pie charts, etc) to show trends, which will stay updated automatically with the latest responses.

Terminology Note: Forms, surveys, polls, quizzes, etc, are all created the same way in Qualtrics. Regardless of your goal, Qualtrics collectively calls what you build a Project and the question page a Survey. For example, even if you're creating a form or quiz, you will use the Survey Builder screen to add questions. This IT guide will therefore refer to Projects and Surveys, but all pages in this IT guide and all Qualtrics documentation applies to any project you're building - a form, a quiz, a survey, etc.

Qualtrics is an online application. You can access Qualtrics by your web browser and other Internet-enabled devices. 

  1. Open an internet browser (e.g. Chrome or Firefox) and go to https://tufts.qualtrics.com
  2. Log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password. You may also be asked to complete DUO two-factor authentication.

Owners of a project can invite others to work with them on that project, such as editing questions, distributing the survey, or viewing survey responses. This is called collaborating on a project. You can invite both Tufts and non-Tufts users as collaborators.

Important: Before inviting someone as a collaborator in your project, they must have logged in to Qualtrics at least once previously.

To invite a collaborator to your project, follow these steps:

  1. Within the project’s Survey tab, click the Tools dropdown and choose Collaborate.
    Tools is above the first survey question
  2. In the Add field, search for the person you wish and choose them from the dropdown. You can search by:
    1. Tufts username
    2. First name
    3. Last name
    4. Full email address (only if they are not affiliated with Tufts)
      Type in the box that appears
  3. After choosing the user from the dropdown, click Add, and, optionally, enter what you'd like the user to see in the email that Qualtrics will automatically send them to notify them that the project has been shared with them.
    Note: The email will not be sent until you configure which permissions you'd like the user to have. You can cancel out of the collaboration screen at any point and the email will not be sent.
    The message box is optional.
  4. Click OK to add the user to the collaboration list.
  5. You can choose what a collaborator has permissions to do by checking and unchecking permission boxes. For example, here we are allowing Brian to edit the survey and view reports, but not to activate/deactivate, copy, or distribute the survey.
    Note: To set more fine-grained Permission Levels, check boxes to the right of his or her name.
    Check the boxes, or click the red minus to remove a collaborator
  6. Click Save. An invitation to the survey will automatically be sent to the new collaborator with any email text you earlier provided.

To see more information on adding a collaborator, including a breakdown of permissions, you can look at Qualtrics's “Sharing a Project” documentation