Use PaperSurvey.io to create paper questionnaires, review scanned answers, and export the results.
The platform provides an end-to-end solution from creating surveys to processing scanned documents and analyzing the recognized data.
This guide covers the steps from creating an account to reviewing and exporting survey responses.
Want to speed up survey creation? Choose a starting point from our template library.
Table of Contents
- Register an account
- Create a survey
- Add questions to a survey
- Print paper survey
- Distribute
- Scan paper forms
- Upload & Process
- Verify responses
- Analyze results
- Export data
Register an account
You should first register a new account if you don't have an account already. You may try the service for 14 days, no credit card details required.
Create a survey
To create a new survey, click Create Survey in the upper-right corner in your dashboard and choose the survey name and language.
Add questions to a survey
Now you may add questions to the survey. To add your first question click "Add your first question" and choose its type.
Question types
The examples below cover selected question types. The current editor offers additional types. Preview a sample survey to see how different fields print.
Below is a list of the question types and short descriptions of each type.
Multiple choice
This question type is suitable for questions where the respondent can pick more than one response:
Single choice
This question type is suitable for questions where the respondent can only pick a single answer. If the respondent checked multiple boxes, the response will be flagged for additional verification:
Multiple choice (grid) / Single choice (grid)
Grid questions place related items in rows with shared answer options in columns. Use them when the same response scale applies to every row.
Short text answer
Use this field for a short written answer. You can set the width of the answer box:
Number
In the paper survey, the question looks similar to Short text answer. However, this question type only recognizes numeric responses. You may choose to have a free-text response box or a field with a specified number of boxes, with one digit in each box. Test both layouts with representative handwriting and review the recognized values against the scans.
Long Text
A Long Text question provides space for a longer written answer. Set the box height to fit the response you expect and check the printed layout.
Range
The range question type allows us to configure a question with a specified number of checkboxes, left and right labels.
Heading
Headings emphasize and separate blocks of questions. Choose a style and customize its colors, then check the paper preview.
Divider
Adds a simple horizontal line to separate blocks of questions.
Page break
Adds a page break so the questions that follow start on the next printed page.
Description
Using this question type you may add some informational text in any part of the survey. You may wish to view text formatting options to further customize the text.
Survey settings
There are several settings available that allow customizing how the layout looks like. You may click on the "Settings" tab to customize how your survey looks like.
Remove informational header
By default, we include information on how to respond (see below). Enable this setting if you want to remove it.
Remove default help text
By default, we include default help text that you can customize or completely remove with this setting.
Preview
Open the Preview tab to inspect the printable layout. Generation time depends on the survey. Check that text, answer boxes, corner marks, and QR codes fit before printing.
Print paper survey
Once you have added your questions and checked the layout, it is time to print it. Depending on how many pages you have in the survey, one or two barcodes will be included on the footer of the survey.
If the survey has only one page, we will include one QR code on the bottom-right side of the page. This allows us to easily identify which survey you are uploading.
If there are two or more pages, an additional barcode on the bottom-left side of the page will be generated. This QR code identifies the respondent’s copy so pages can be matched and duplicate uploads detected when the codes are readable.
For instance, if you have a 3-page survey with 10 respondents, there will be 30 pages to scan. With readable unique page codes, you can scan those pages out of order and match them to the correct questionnaires. Check missing or unreadable codes before treating the batch as complete.
If you wish, you may enable the additional barcode to be included in one-page surveys too. For multiple-page surveys, you can disable the bottom-left barcode, but you will need to upload each set of pages in a separate PDF/TIFF file.
Scan paper forms
Once you have some responses collected you may scan them for recognition. We advise on making a few test scans to test your printer and scanner. Sometimes with budget printers, there are problems where printers crop the bottom part of the survey.
If you do not have a scanner or are planning to upgrade, please take a look at our Best document scanners for paper-based surveys recognition guide.
Upload & Process
After you have scanned the files, you may finally upload them.
We provide several ways to upload scanned documents:
- Upload - go to the website and select the files to upload.
- Email - send an email and it will be automatically processed.
- Zapier - connect other applications to papersurvey.io and streamline uploads
- This allows optimizing the workflow in any way you want without needing to code:
- Send Gmail attachments to PaperSurvey.io for processing
- Do something when uploaded documents are recognized (e.g. to send data to your database)
- This allows optimizing the workflow in any way you want without needing to code:
- Dropbox integrations - upload scanned files to a selected folder and we will automatically sync it when a file is added to Dropbox.
- Phone scanning - use a document-scanning app to capture clear pages, then upload the resulting files. Test a few forms first.
- Programmatic access (API) - (availability depends on your plan) develop custom integrations to interact and upload files to PaperSurvey.io from your CRM or app.
Verify responses
Recognition and validation can flag unclear marks, such as multiple selections on a single-choice question. Compare recognized answers with the scans and correct errors before using the results. Check accepted answers too, because a misread is not always flagged.
For written answers, choose the recognition and review settings that fit the field. Check transcriptions against the original handwriting, especially names, identifiers, and other values where a wrong character matters.
Analyze results
Use the available charts and analysis widgets to explore the reviewed responses. Check the question type and analysis settings before interpreting a chart.
Please reach out to us if you like to see different analysis methods and we will try to add them.
Export Data
Export options for further analysis include:
- CSV
- Excel
- Excel with images - Includes text responses as images
- SPSS
Check the Uploads page and current export options for downloading your source files and response data.