Survey 123: A tutorial

Introduction
The main objective of this lab was to become acquainted with Esri's Survey123, which is an application that works with ArcMap and ArcMapOnline to create surveys. These surveys can be extremely helpful in collecting geospatial information without having to go out into the field. The idea is that willing participants fill out the survey supplying the desired information, including a location, if need be. In this lab the tutorial Get Started with Survey 123 for ArcGIS provided by Esri Online was taken. This tutorial includes four lessons.

Lessons
The first lesson demonstrated how to create the survey. After logging into the UWEC enterprise account for Esri a new survey was created, which involved adding different kinds of questions (Figure 1). In the tutorial a HOA Emergency Preparedness survey was created using 28 questions related to preparedness in the case of a disaster.

Figure 1. Survey 123 provides multiple types of questions to be added to the survey.

The second lesson showed how to make the survey available to other people. In this instance the survey was made available to only those in the UWEC enterprise account. The survey can be accessed by a URL. The tutorial called for the survey to be completed eight times. I made sure to vary the answers submitted to get more interesting results. This section also revealed that Esri created a Survey123 app so that surveys could be taken with a smartphone (Figure 2).

Figure 2. This is a screenshot of the Survey123 app on an iPhone 6.

The third lesson explored the analyze and data tab, where data from the survey can be viewed in different charts and tables. All of the data collected from the survey was arranged in many different tables that were easy to read and use. This information is useful when writing reports about the collected data. Especially useful for the geospatial aspect of ArcGIS is the use of a map that displays where the survey-takers' homes were (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Spatial information of the survey-takers' homes were provided by the survey-takers.

The last lesson demonstrated how to share display the map in ArcGIS Viewer and how to share that map. The user could manipulate map colors and the way the spatial data is displayed (Figure 4). Everything from Pop-ups to the data point could be manipulated. The map can then be shared as a web map for the rest the public (or university enterprise account) to see.

Figure 4. The web map shows geospatial data collected from the survey.

Results & Conclusion

The results of the map are random. When filling out the survey I tried to answer the questions based on where the "survey-taker's" home was. While filling out the survey, sometimes I claimed to have a house in areas where disasters occured more often. Unfortunately, I mentioned a state or city rather than a specific address, so the survey assumed the house was in Eau Claire, WI (where the survey was taken).

Survey123 can be extremely useful in fields where specific information about people are needed with geospatial information. My field of study does not involve information by a broad range of people, so this survey does not suite my study needs, but I still think that it could be extremely useful in other science fields.