Free Use

• You would like to use SoSci Survey free of charge for non-commercial research, but don't know how to identify yourself as a student of a university?
• You do not know whether you are entitled to use SoSci Survey free of charge?

The SoSci Survey GmbH supports non-commercial academic research and non-profit institutions with the free provision of the survey server www.soscisurvey.de including free online support.

You can read the exact conditions for free use on the homepage of the SoSci Survey GmbH: Free Use for Non-commercial Online Surveys

On the whole, the following applies: If a company or you generate income through the survey (e.g. employee survey for a company, customer survey, an institution pays you a fee or expense allowance for conducting a study), then there is a charge for using the service. If you are writing a thesis for a company, then explain to the company that it should pay at least the usage fee – after all, in the end the company benefits directly or indirectly from the study.

Important: A survey project is only free of charge if you select the option “free use” when you register the survey project. If you choose to create a fee-based survey project (this must be confirmed with a button “Order fee-based”), then the survey is charged.

Important: If you select the pro-server s2survey.net for a survey project, then the survey project is always charged. You can only register a survey project on the pro-server if you have purchased a license in the SoSci Survey Shop before.

Regarding the free provision we distinguish between …

• academic research, which in the end benefits the scientific community through publication, and
• research projects, which are corrected by a lecturer at the end and then moved to the archives. We call the latter methodical practices.

In method practice www.soscisurvey.de displays an advertisement on the last page of the questionnaire.

In academic research projects, SoSci Survey displays an invitation to the Sosci Panel – a non-commercial institution of the German Communication Association supporting scientific survey studies – on the last page by default. This invitation can, if not desired, simply be turned off on the “last page” of the questionnaire.

In theses the issue of publication is often not easy. We are quite tolerant in this respect: If the thesis can be viewed by third parties via the library, we consider this already as a publication. Of course, it is a pity if you invest a lot of work in a thesis and it then disappears in the drawer. Therefore, we generally recommend that you talk to your supervisor about options for publication in a professional journal. If the thesis is unsuitable for this purpose, you can still publish it on numerous websites. Other students and researchers will be pleased about this.

Theses with a retention flag are an exception. These are often created in cooperation with a company anyway and are therefore subject to costs. If this is not the case, they are nevertheless not considered academic research due to the lack of publication of the results.

If you are unsure, follow the instructions for creating a free survey project (below). You need to fill out a short questionnaire during the registration process. This will check which category your survey project belongs to:

• Academic research (free without advertising)
• Method practice (free with advertising on the last page)
• (Partially) commercial research for which a fee is charged

Important: Please refrain from contacting us by email or even by phone to discuss whether your survey project is free or subject to charge. With significantly more than 10,000 survey projects per year, we do not have the capacity to answer this question individually for each user. If you are unsure, your survey project is probably subject to a charge.

If you use www.soscisurvey.de free of charge, you get the same excellent functionality as paying users. However, there are two limitations:

(1) On the pro-server s2survey.net a module for descriptive data analysis is available. This module is specifically designed for companies and not for scientific survey projects. Since free survey projects can only be registered at www.soscisurvey.de, the module for data analysis is not available there.

(2) The scope of free survey project is limited to 5000 data records. This is considered sufficient for 99.9% of all scientific survey studies. If you collect significantly more records, we reserve the right to charge an expense allowance. If necessary, please contact us in time by e-mail to info@soscisurvey.de.

Two optional additional modules must generally be added at a charge if you need them:

• Module for measuring implicit attitudes (IAT)
• Module for advanced methods (RTR/CRM)

You can register on a survey server at your university, if your university provides one (SoSci Survey at your Campus).

Apart from that there is no student user account.

All user accounts are the same. Within a user account at www.soscisurvey.de, both free and paid survey projects can be registered.

We assume that (a) you are able to assess whether a company will benefit from your survey and (b) you have an interest in SoSci Survey being available in the future. This will only be possible if commercial surveys also contribute their share in the form of a usage fee.

Therefore, when registering a survey project, you can choose for yourself whether you want to use www.soscisurvey.de free of charge or whether you have to pay. Of course, in the case of unlawful free use, we will claim compensation and enforce this under civil law. After all, such behavior would be unfair not only to us, but also to all other users.

On www.soscisurvey.de no personal data may be collected in the sense of the GDPR. This applies regardless of whether you carry out the survey as a private individual, as a university member or as a company.

• On the paid pro-server s2survey.net personal data can be collected/processed after a Data Processing Agreement (AVV) has been agreed upon.
• Many university survey servers (SoSci Survey at your Campus) allow the processing of personal data. Please clarify with the contact person at your university whether personal data may be processed there.
• For www.soscisurvey.de there are exceptions for address and contact data. These are explained in the personal data manual.

For using www.soscisurvey.de free of charge, proceed as follows (if the prerequisites are met):

• First check whether your university operates its own survey server (SoSci Survey at your Campus) – if this is the case, you can register there directly.
• Otherwise, register a user account at www.soscisurvey.de. With the registration a contract of use is concluded. More about this below.
• After you have created a user account and confirmed the email address, you will automatically be redirected to project registration (creating a new survey project in the user account).
• Choose the default server www.soscisurvey.de. The use of the pro-server s2survey.net is always subject to charges.
• Now you can choose whether you want to use www.soscisurvey.de for free or with costs. Under “Free Use” click on the button “Check requirements”.
• Now answer the questions about the survey project truthfully. If the requirements for free use are met, you will need to provide a short description of the project.

Note: You can run both free and paid survey projects in parallel in one user account. If you are still unsure, you can also create a “test project” first.

If you initially registered a free test project, you can convert it into a free or paid survey project at any time.

To do this, please click on Survey Project → Project Settings in the survey project. There you will find the type of the project. Click on the pen-and-paper symbol ().

You can then select the correct project type. The procedure is equivalent to the procedure described above (How do I Use www.soscisurvey.de for Free?) after selecting the survey server www.soscisurvey.de.

You have accidentally registered a commercial survey project, but wanted to use SoSci Survey for free?

You have registered a free survey project, but afterwards you realize that the survey would be liable to charges?

Please send a short e-mail to info@soscisurvey.de stating the survey project's URL – we can then reset the survey project to “test project”. Then please proceed as described above (convert test project to free survey project).

By registering on www.soscisurvey.de you conclude a contract with the SoSci Survey GmbH.

In fact, this is also the case if you register with any other online service ( email provider, internet board, …). However, we will inform you explicitly and also send you the General Terms and Conditions (AGB), which determine the contract of use.

The registration is always free of charge. But you have the possibility to purchase paid services within your user account. This includes buying something in the SoSci Survey Shop or registering a fee-based survey project in your user account.

No worries: To order something with costs, you have to explicitly click on a button “order with costs”.

The contract basically regulates rights and obligations when using SoSci Survey.

For example, we want to ensure that users do not upload illegal content to the server and distribute it on the Internet.

In return, you probably do not want SoSci Survey GmbH to pass on your questionnaire or even the collected data to third parties.

Such basic rules may be self-evident – but they only become legally binding through the general terms and conditions and the user contract.

Consumers have 14 days right of withdrawal in Internet commerce. You will be informed about this during registration – and this right also applies to the contract with SoSci Survey.

If you want to revoke the contract, this will automatically be accompanied by the deletion of your user account (a use of the service – even free use – is only possible with a valid user contract). If you have already created a survey project in your user account, this will also be deleted.

You can use the form provided for revocation. If you click on the button for deleting the user account in SoSci Survey under User Account → User Data at the bottom and confirm the deletion, this will have the same effect.

If you accidentally purchased a fee-based service – in the shop or by registering a fee-based survey project – please contact us immediately by email to info@soscisurvey.de.