SoSci Survey – Simple, yet Powerful

SoSci Survey allows both tech-savvy project leaders and scientists who prefer to focus on content to work equally well to generate results (What Makes SoSci Survey so Special?).

With SoSci Survey, simple online questionnaires are created quickly. Whether you need maximum flexibility or individual design, all the possibilities of programming with PHP and HTML/CSS are available to SoSci Survey users.

Rooted in the University

The basis for SoSci Survey was developed in 2003 at the Institute for Communication Science and Media Research at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. A collaboration with the University of Zurich in 2004 provided useful additions to the tool. After the rights remained with the developer, the program was then privately developed and constantly enhanced through exchanges with researchers.

Since 2006, online researchers have been able to use the software package publicly, and scientific projects, including numerous final and doctoral theses, have benefited from the tool free of charge.

Through exchanges with scientists and practitioners, SoSci Survey has experienced many improvements. Finally, in 2010, after a complete overhaul, Version 2.0 was released, which has since been under continuous development. In 2012, the software changed its name: "oFb - the online questionnaire" became "SoSci Survey" (pronounced "sou-sie").

In 2014, the newly founded SoSci Survey GmbH took over the operation of the software in order to permanently provide the offer with a solid basis and to meet the increased demands for reliability and data protection in online surveys.

Continuous Development

SoSci Survey is constantly being improved on the basis of lively exchanges with users. Above all, these improvements include new functionalities that allow for a larger selection of survey designs to be used when creating challenging research projects - but at the same time, the user interface has been continuously improved upon to make it easier for new users to access the survey software.

New features are often provided on www.soscisurvey.de as a trial in the beta phase. Additionally, tested software packages are provided for use on a local survey server. On the server s2survey.net, which was established in 2016 for commercial surveys, program versions are also only used after a longer test phase.

You can visit the following link to read about the program’s latest updates: Program Versions for the Local Survey Server

Cite SoSci Survey

You may or may not choose to indicate in your work that you used the SoSci Survey software or the server www.soscisurvey.de to collect your data. Strictly speaking, it is important to distinguish between the software and the server/service. While a computer program can be cited by name, the server can be cited only by the providing the URL in the text, as follows:

"The online questionnaire was generated using SoSci Survey (Leiner, 2024) and was made available to users via www.soscisurvey.de."

The aforementioned text represents a sample citation for the software according to the APA bibliography format. The software on www.soscisurvey.de is updated regularly. The current version can be seen after logging in to the program on the bottom left-side of the homepage.

Leiner, D. J. (2024). SoSci Survey (Version 3.5.01) [Computer software]. Available at https://www.soscisurvey.de