Run a research study with Surbee

This guide walks through a typical academic study in Surbee: drafting the questionnaire with Surbee's AI, adding a consent page, testing it, sharing it with participants, and exporting the data for SPSS, R or Excel.

1. Describe your study to Surbee's AI

On your home page, type into the box that says Ask or build a survey.... The more context you give, the better the first draft. A good prompt covers:

• Who the participants are. For example, "first-year undergraduates in a psychology course".
• What you want to measure. Name the constructs, and the scales you plan to use if you have them.
• The structure you need. A consent page first, then demographics, then the main measures, then a thank-you page.
• Practical limits. Target completion time, reading level, and which questions must be required.

For example:

Build a study on study habits and exam stress for first-year undergraduates. Start with a consent page with an "I agree / I do not agree" question that ends the survey if they do not agree. Then ask age range, year of study and hours of study per week. Then a 5-point Likert block with 8 statements on exam stress. End with a thank-you page. Keep it under 10 minutes.

Surbee drafts the survey and shows it in the chat. Click Open editor to work on it.

2. Review the draft

Read every question and answer option. Surbee's AI can word a question in a leading way, miss an answer option or attach logic to the wrong answer, so treat the draft as a starting point. See Surbee gave me inaccurate or misleading information for more on this.

You can edit any block directly, or ask for changes in the chat panel beside the editor, for example "make the age question a dropdown" or "add a reverse coded item to the stress scale".

Things worth checking for a study:

• Validated scales. If you are using a published instrument, compare every item and every scale label against the original wording.
• Required questions. Select a question and check the Required toggle. Many ethics boards expect participants to be able to skip questions, so only make a question required when you need it.
• Scale order. Likert and Matrix answers are exported as numbers in the order the scale is shown, so make sure the scale runs in the direction you intend. See Export your data for analysis.

3. Fill in the consent page

If you asked for a consent page, Surbee's AI drafts one. The study information it writes usually contains placeholders in square brackets, such as [Insert researcher name] or [Insert ethics committee contact]. You must replace every one of them with your real study details before you publish.

Build a consent page explains what to include, how to set up the agree and decline answers, and what happens when someone declines.

4. Preview on a computer and on a phone

Click Preview in the top bar. The preview runs your survey exactly as participants will see it, including branching, and nothing you enter in it is saved as a response.

Use the Computer and Mobile buttons at the top of the preview to check both layouts. Many participants will open a link from their phone. On narrow screens, Likert and Matrix questions show one statement at a time in a stacked layout, so check that long statements still read well.

Run through the survey at least twice: once agreeing to take part and once declining. Use Restart preview to start again.

5. Choose your settings and publish

Click Collect responses in the top right. The Send and collect responses dialog opens.

1. Under Who can respond, choose:
   • Anyone with the link for anonymous responses with no sign-in. This is the usual choice for anonymous studies.
   • Signed-in people only if participants must sign in before they submit. You can then turn on One response per person.
2. Under Response settings, review Show progress bar, Allow going back, Randomize questions and Collect behavioral data. If you need a fixed number of participants, turn on Limit total responses and set Maximum responses.
3. Click Publish and collect.

Once the survey is live, the top bar button changes to Share survey.

For what each audience option means for participant privacy, see Anonymity and respondent data.

6. Share the survey with participants

All sharing options are in the same dialog. Click Share survey to open it.

• Link. Click Copy link and paste it into an email, a course announcement or a recruitment post.
• QR code. Open the QR code tab and click Download PNG (or SVG for print). Put it on a lecture slide or a poster so people can scan it with their phone camera.
• Invitation. Open the Invitation tab, enter email addresses separated by commas, add a message and click Send. This opens your own email app with the invitation ready to send, so it goes out from your address.
• Embed in Moodle, Canvas or Blackboard. Open the Embed tab and click Copy next to Embed on a web page or LMS. Paste the code into any page, label or HTML block in your course that accepts HTML. If your LMS strips embedded content, use the Link button code or post the plain link instead.

7. Monitor responses

Open your survey's Insights page, or click View responses in the editor's top bar.

• Overview shows Responses, Completion rate, Median time and Flagged by Cipher for the selected date range.
• Results lists every response with its status, Cipher score, submission date and duration. Click a row to read the answers.
• Funnel shows where people stopped answering.

To get an email when responses arrive, open All project settings, go to Responses and turn on Email me about new responses. The email tells you how many responses came in. It never contains the answers.

Check flagged responses while the study is running, so problems surface early. See Response quality in research studies.

8. Export your data

On the Insights page, click Export and choose Excel workbook, CSV or PDF report. The export covers the date range selected on the page, so switch it to All time first if you want every response.

Export your data for analysis explains every column and gives tips for SPSS and R.