The two big problems with multipage HTML surveys is losing respondents and respondent survey data integrity. The reason for this is the way in which multipage surveys work. Here are some of the problems that occur when doing multipage surveys:

• Inherent network delays causing the respondent to give up.
• Inherent web server delays causing the respondent to give up.
• Potential web server load (by cgi) which limits number of respondents.
• Potential web server load (by cgi) which degrades overall web server performance.
• Potential to confuse cgi by using Back Button rather than a link on survey page.

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This can be a very real problem depending on how the cgi is implemented
The above problems are why we invented Multi-Screen surveys, Multi-Screen surveys send the respondent the ENTIRE survey as a single HTML file, but display only the question or group of questions (matrix/grid) the respondent is suppose to “see” at one time. This allows the survey designer to logically create sections in a survey. Multi-screen surveys have all the advantages of Multipage surveys, but not the disadvantages. Multi-screen surveys require a DOM compliant web browser including: IE 5.0 or later, Netscape 6 or later, and Safari 1.0 or later, all of which meet this requirement.

HTML Style
Our HTML based survey forms use a very basic level of HTML. This allows virtually anyone with an Internet browser to participate in a survey that uses a Advanced Survey Software generated HTML form. The Advanced Survey Software HTML option is our general purpose Internet survey product incorporating KISS methodology. The only requirement of the browser is that it understands how to display tables (virtually every browser in use today can do this). We believe our HTML surveys are the best looking fully generated surveys available. They are also the easiest to embellish with additional images, audio clips and video because we use no hidden fields or proprietary tags in our forms!

JAVA Style
JAVA based survey presentation option implements a significantly more sophisticated technology. We believe this is the future of Internet survey administration. There are many advantages to using this type of survey presentation including:

• Zero delay next question presentation
• Immediate enforceable skip patterns
• Immediate enforceable answer required
• Immediate constant sum enforcement
• Real-time constant sum calculations
• On-demand audio, image, and video
• Immediate no-error forced ranking
• Immediate numeric range checking
• Immediate multiple submission rejection

A real advantage of our Java applet is that all processing and range checking is IMMEDIATE. Unlike Java script surveys or multipage surveys where the error handling is performed on the web server. For example, the respondent clicks on the submit button only to be informed that a mistake was made on a question answered 10 questions back. This can be very frustrating! Have you ever had this happen to you? And if so how did you respond? Did it change your attitude for the remainder of the survey? (Assuming you finished it...)