Evidence · companion tool
Data Collection
Collect your research data where you’ll analyse it
Empirical research used to mean designing your study in one tool, collecting responses in a generic form builder, and carrying a CSV back by hand. Data Collection closes that gap: build a consented survey, share a public link, and send the responses straight into real statistical analysis, without leaving your project.
What Data Collection does
Consent comes first, always
Every form opens with a participant-information and consent page (a research-grade template is included). Respondents cannot reach question one without accepting. The ethics step is built into the instrument, not left to memory.
Anonymity you don't have to trust: it's structural
Responses are stored as answers and a timestamp, nothing else. The database has no column for IP addresses or device data, so anonymity can't be weakened by a setting. It simply has nowhere to leak.
A public link, no accounts
Publish and share one link (or close it any time). Respondents answer on any device without signing up: Likert scales, single and multiple choice, numbers, and open text, mobile-first.
Abuse-resistant by default
Every submission is validated server-side against your question schema, response limits are enforced atomically (a form that fills mid-request stores nothing extra), bots are silently dropped, and rate limits guard the public endpoint.
Watch responses land
A live counter and response table in your project, with one-click CSV export at any time. Your data is never locked in.
One click to real statistics
"Send to Data Analysis" turns your responses into a dataset in the same pipeline as a CSV upload: descriptives, t-tests, ANOVA, regression and more (computed by code, never guessed by a model), flowing on into your Results chapter.
Grounded by design
Collection is part of your project’s record: form creation, publishing, and closing all land in the audit trail, and the numbers in your thesis trace from respondent answers through computed statistics, never through a model’s guess.
Survey and data collection questions
Do respondents need an account to answer my survey?
No. You publish one public link and anyone can answer it on any device without signing up, installing anything, or seeing CiteDash at all. You can close the link at any time.
Are the responses really anonymous?
Anonymity here is structural, not a setting you have to trust. A response is stored as its answers plus a timestamp. There is no column in the database for an IP address or device data, so there is nothing to leak and no toggle that could weaken it later.
Does it handle participant consent for my ethics application?
Every form opens with a participant-information and consent page, and a research-grade template is included. A respondent cannot reach the first question without accepting. That gives you a consent step built into the instrument itself, which is what most ethics committees want to see. It does not grant approval: your committee still reviews your study.
What question types can I use?
Likert scales, single choice, multiple choice, numeric, and open text, laid out mobile-first. Every submission is validated on the server against your question schema, so malformed or injected answers never reach your dataset.
Can I export my data, or am I locked in?
You can export the full response table to CSV at any time, including while collection is still running. A live counter shows responses landing as they arrive.
Can I analyse the responses without exporting them first?
Yes. One click sends your responses into Data Analysis as a dataset, the same pipeline a CSV upload takes: descriptives, t-tests, ANOVA, regression and more, computed by real code rather than guessed by a model, and flowing on into your results chapter.
Works with
Data Collection is a companion to Data Analysis within the 17 connected tools (your responses become an ordinary dataset you can analyse, chart, and write up).