Introduction
This geospatial lab activity was an introduction into Survey123 for ArcGIS designed to give us all a basic understanding of what can be accomplished with Survey123 before we went on and developed our own survey. This introduction was given through the Survey123 tutorial as a part of ESRI's free online instructional tutorials. This tutorial has the user create a safety survey for their fictional Home Owner's Association (HOA) that would be distributed to all those living within the HOA. This tutorial then teaches the user how to analyze and share the survey that they had just created. Following the creation of this survey and the completion of the tutorial, I then went and designed my own survey designed to collect information on the types of crosswalks around UWEC campus and the overall level of pedestrian usage of said crosswalks.
Methods
The first step of the ESRI Survey123 tutorial was to create a new survey and name it, add tags, and add a description with the provided information about HOA safety.
Next, a basic overview of the Survey123 interface was run through so that the user can understand the different tabs of information, what everything on the screen means, and how to add in the necessary survey elements.
Next,it was time to add elements to the survey that will be important to obtain the necessary HOA safety information. These elements included a map, text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, and photo uploads. All of these elements were labeled with appropriate questions and answers with some also being assigned hints to aid the survey user in determining what kind of information to fill in the survey with.
Some questions that were to be asked in the survey had various options for answers, with some questions being dependent upon the user's answer to a previous question. This sort of question dependency can be easily incorporated into a Survey123 survey through the use of the Set Rule button, which allows for a certain answer of one question to open up another possible question.
Continuing with this tutorial, many more questions were added with the provided label, hint, and answer information. Finally, the survey was saved and published online so that other members within my organization, in this case UWEC, can see the survey.
With the tutorial survey completed and a better idea on how to go about creating my own survey, I did just that. The survey that I created was one designed to assess the the level of safety that pedestrians have when using many of the common intersections in the area around UWEC campus. To do this, I created a survey with a map of the Eau Claire area that allows the user to pin a certain location on the map, a drop down selection with the various types of crosswalks found in the area, and a multiple choice radio button that allows to user to input the level of pedestrian traffic from low, medium, or high for that given intersection. This survey and the data attained from it can be used to craft a rough idea on what crosswalks may be the safest for pedestrians and which ones may be unsafe.
With the tutorial survey completed and a better idea on how to go about creating my own survey, I did just that. The survey that I created was one designed to assess the the level of safety that pedestrians have when using many of the common intersections in the area around UWEC campus. To do this, I created a survey with a map of the Eau Claire area that allows the user to pin a certain location on the map, a drop down selection with the various types of crosswalks found in the area, and a multiple choice radio button that allows to user to input the level of pedestrian traffic from low, medium, or high for that given intersection. This survey and the data attained from it can be used to craft a rough idea on what crosswalks may be the safest for pedestrians and which ones may be unsafe.
Discussion
While I have had extensive experience with ArcGIS online and many of its resources before, I did not have any experience with Survcey123 and thus greatly enjoyed this lab exercise as it provided me new and useful knowledge. The versatility and ease of use in creating a survey with Survey123 will most likely come in handy in future classes that I will take. I can see the potential for using these types of surveys to accomplish a wide variety of projects for many different types of classes, including those that are outside the field of geography.
Conclusion
Overall, learning how to use Survey123 to create and implement a useful survey was an important and beneficial exercise to undertake. This lab exercise gave me insight into the fact that there are many useful methods and applications for such a survey that is overall, quick and easy to create and share. The wide variety of possible uses for such surveys leads me to believe that I could use such surveys for topics that I may not even be aware of yet. Using Survey123 left me with valuable knowledge about this tool and also valuable data that could be useful in the creation of future projects.
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