Free Use for Non-commercial Online Surveys

SoSci Survey promotes scientific research through the free and ad-free provision of the survey server www.soscisurvey.de as cloud service.

In addition, www.soscisurvey.de (cloud service) is available free of charge and ad-free for surveys created by non-profit organizations. This service is further available free of charge for surveys used in the context of method exercises and include advertising at the end of the questionnaire.

Free survey projects on www.soscisurvey.de can be online for 3 monaths (a monthly extension allows for 2 years), and collect a maximum of 5000 interviews (records in the data set). Collecting personal data under the GDPR is not permitted in free survey projects on www.soscisurvey.de.

Free Survey Project (Cloud Service)

In order to use the service free of charge, please register at www.soscisurvey.de, select the server www.soscisurvey.de when creating the survey project and then click on "Free use" and "Check prerequisites".

To use the SoSci service free of charge, the survey project must have no commercial background. A survey project is classified as non-commercial if it is not being carried out on behalf of or in cooperation with a commercial enterprise. Cooperation exists if the business enterprise influences the study in any way (for example by including questions formulated according to company bias), receives exclusive data, results or a presentation related to the results, or pays a fee for the study’s execution.

Most scientific works (for example, research papers; bachelor, master and diploma theses; and dissertations) that are not completed in cooperation with a company are eligible to use SoSci Survey for free.

Important: On the server www.soscisurvey.de only anonymous surveys may be conducted. If you intend to collect personal data, this is only allowed on the pro-server s2survey.net with costs. In case of doubt, please contact your university's data protection officer.

Conditions for ad-free questionnaires and those with advertising included

Scientific surveys and online questionnaires that are created by charitable organizations benefit from a completely advertising-free questionnaire. We classify a survey project as scientific if the results will be published, for example in an academic journal, in a book or in a thesis (without restrictions).

Non-commercial surveys created by a school, university or their students that produce results which will not be published, i.e. will not benefit society, are classified as method exercises. In such cases, an advertisement will appear on the last page of the online questionnaire. The choice in advertising partners is carefully selected.

All the details about using www.soscisurvey.de for free

No Free Use

Free use is unavailable in the following cases.

• You or your institution receive a payment for conducting the survey beyond your regular salary.
• The survey is part of a BMBF-funded project and at least one project partner is a commercial company.
• The study is conducted for a commercial company (also in the context of seminars).
• The results of the study are used to found a company or are intended to support companies, e.g. as part of general business promotion.