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GOOGLE FORMS AS AN INSTRUMENT OF COLLECTING DATA DURING

PANDEMIC

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 AgriGate- An International Multidisciplinary e-Magazine
Volume: 03 Issue No: 08
Volume: 02 Issue No: 08
GOOGLE FORMS AS AN INSTRUMENT OF COLLECTING
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH HAZARDS OF WORKERS
DATA DURING PANDEMIC
Article ID: AG-VO3-I08-22
Article ID: AG-VO2-I08-07
Venu Prasad H D
Scientist-B, Training and Outreach Research Group, Centre for Water Resources
Development and Management, Kozhikode, Kerala.
*Corresponding Authors Email ID: venu@cwrdm.org

Abstract
The emergence of Covid-19 creates much chaos among the general public. In these situations, it
is quite difficult to conduct social science studies, as social science research depends mainly on
collecting primary data. Collecting primary data during the pandemic is exceedingly difficult as
the virus is highly contagious and individuals fear communicating face-to-face with outsiders.
During this scenario, conducting research studies in social science needs new tools to collect
primary data remotely without face-to-face contact, such as online surveys viz., Google Forms.
This paper focuses on the precautions one should consider while formulating and designing the
Google Forms survey.
Keywords: Google forms, primary data, social scientists, pandemic, data collection.

Introduction
The emergence of the new pandemic in terms of Covid-19 creates panic and anxiety
among the public worldwide. A person is terrified to meet other individuals face to face because
of the highly contagious nature of SARS Cov-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19.
Communication between individuals and maintaining relationships is challenging in situations
like this. Thanks to advancements in technology like mobile phones, the internet, etc.,
individuals can maintain communication. Talking about communication, Social Science as a
discipline uses communication as a tool to collect data to know about the Societal and individual
views towards various aspects/events of day-to-day activities. The emergence of Covid-19 not
only impacts the economy but also creates a challenge for researchers, especially for Social

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 AgriGate- An International Multidisciplinary e-Magazine
Scientists, as they depend mainly on primary data for their research. For a Social Scientist,
collecting
Volume: 02data at the No:
Issue individual
08 level is very difficult in situations like this, where people are
afraid to meet each other because of the pandemic nature of the virus, the collection of primary
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH HAZARDS OF WORKERS
data is even more difficult.
Then, how a Social Scientist will collect data, which is very important for any research.
Though collecting primary data is mainly through face-to-face contact, there are other modes of
Article ID: AG-VO2-I08-07
collecting data like a telephonic interview, writing letters, etc.. However, these are old, and
getting a response will take a lot of time. In a pandemic situation, even if you send a letter or
make a phone conversation, you may get low feedback. In these situations, gathering data is
challenging for the Scientist because he/she cannot go to an individual and talk to the respondent
face to face, as people will not freely allow and respond to an outsider in a pandemic crisis.
Nevertheless, Scientist wants to know how the individual‘s knowledge, attitude, behaviour, etc.
to the pandemic or anything related to the coping mechanism of the individuals or the lockdown
effect on the public, etc. through data collection. Primary data collection from the Covid-19
patients or those who are in quarantine is very helpful in designing relevant measures by the
Government. As data collection has been arduous in pandemic situations, Scientists/Research
scholars must choose alternative data gathering methods, or else stop the collection of data,
which will automatically stop the research and halt the work until the pandemic is over.

Thanks to the advancement in Information and Communication Technology, innovations

come across in different platforms like Google, where ‗Google Forms‘ emerge as the prominent
choice for Scientists to collect data during pandemic situations. Google Forms is the savior for
many Social Scientists as it helps in easily formulating questionnaires and sending them within a
fraction of seconds, either through email or WhatsApp numbers.

Advantages of Google Forms

The main advantage of ‗Google Forms‘ is that anyone can create and administer the
questionnaire with minimum time investment without any prior knowledge of ‗Google Forms‘
(Gehringer, 2010). ‗Google Forms‘ offers a wide variety of features in designing questions
ranging from a simple text to use of images or videos. Even it provides a variety of ways to
formulate questions using paragraphs, starting with short answers to multiple choices.

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 AgriGate- An International Multidisciplinary e-Magazine
An effort has made to show a pictorial way of using ‗Google Forms‘ for the general
audience
Volume:in02theseIssue
papers
No:(Mondal
08 et al., 2019) (Raju & Harinarayana, 2016) and the advantages
and disadvantages of Google forms has been described on this website (DataScope, 2018). It has
OCCUPATIONAL
already used by a few of the researchers HEALTH
in differentHAZARDS
fields like OF WORKERS
medicine (Graham & Borgen,
2018), (Gehringer, 2010) among school students to evaluate the courses (Gehringer, 2010),
perception of the students (Chaiyo & Nokham, 2017), to know about the gender-based
Article ID: AG-VO2-I08-07
performance (Kim & Park, 2012), etc.

These studies indicate that there is no restriction in using ‗Google Forms‘, whether it is
medicine or social science. This quality of dynamic usage that too free of cost will eventually
attract a large part of the population. In India, most of the Webinars conducted by different
institutes use it as a registration form and feedback form.

Importance of Google forms

The importance of using Google forms has grown considerably after the emergence of
the pandemic, as many of them in India are using it to collect the data. But what precautions one
needs to take while designing the ‘Google Forms‘ is very important as one is dealing with an
unknown set of audiences. As most surveys are voluntary, the way the questions framed helps
attract most individuals. Frame the questions briefly, clearly, and to the point and avoid
ambiguous phrases or words, so that the respondents will understand and provide the correct
answer. If possible, add attractive images as questions, so that the survey reaches more
respondents. Limit the number of questions to a few as the respondent may not have much time
to complete your questionnaire. Remember that the right way to respond is more important than
the length of the poll. One can make a lengthy questionnaire and get a weak response, even if
you get a response, the answers may not be that valid at the end. If you need to keep the
questions more, then frame the most important ones at the beginning of the survey, and in the
end, you can keep the general questions like the individual's socio-economic background. It is
mainly because a person shows more interest in answering at first rather than at the end of the
survey.
It is always better to give the options to choose, instead of asking them to write the
answers to the question, so that it is easier for the respondent to respond with little effort and
with less time and one can finish the survey quickly. It is better to give some questions to write,

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 AgriGate- An International Multidisciplinary e-Magazine
so that statistical tools can be applied otherwise it is very difficult. If one wishes to get more
responses,
Volume: 02then Issue
preferNo:
not08to collect the email ids of the respondents. However, there is an
opposing corner to it, as one cannot ensure the answers received were from the same person who
OCCUPATIONAL
answered it. Also, there HEALTH
is a chance of receiving HAZARDS
duplicate OF sometimes.
responses WORKERS Of course, you
can delete the duplicate answers before analyzing the data in Excel. One of the advantages of
using ‗Google Forms‘ is that the data is readily and easily available in Excel format so that the
Article ID: AG-VO2-I08-07
data tabulation time can be saved and the data analysis will be much easier.

Questions can be framed in languages other than English and use the respondent‘s local
dialect to frame the survey. The main drawback of Google forms is that an uneducated person
should not be allowed to undertake the quiz, as he cannot read. Therefore, to conduct the Google
Forms survey, the respondent should have a minimum level of education on reading and
understanding. Even in cases where the general public is well educated, only a few will answer
these kinds of questionnaires. In this case, there is a need to awaken the general public about the
importance of Social Science surveys, so that most of them will respond positively to the studies
of this nature.

Conclusion
An overall note, Google developed an extremely useful tool in the form of ‗Google
Forms‘ to help many Scientists/Research scholars in situations like the present pandemic to
collect the data remotely with less time and less effort at no cost. This pandemic seems to have
been with us for quite some time, until then Google Forms plays a prominent role in gathering
data and helping many Social Scientists across the World to continue their research studies.
References
Chaiyo, Y., & Nokham, R. (2017). The effect of Kahoot, Quizizz and Google Forms on the
student‘s perception in the classrooms response system. 2nd Joint International
Conference on Digital Arts, Media, and Technology 2017: Digital Economy for
Sustainable Growth, ICDAMT 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDAMT.2017.7904957
DataScope. (2018). Advantages and Disadvantages of Google Form. Data Scope Website.
Gehringer, E. (2010). Daily course evaluation with Google forms. ASEE Annual Conference and
Exposition, Conference Proceedings.

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 AgriGate- An International Multidisciplinary e-Magazine
Graham, M. J., & Borgen, J. (2018). Google Forms. In Google Tools Meets Middle School.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506360188.n7
Volume: 02 Issue No: 08
Kim, D. ―DK,‖ & Park, C. (2012). Gender differences in the effectiveness of Google Forms in
class. JournalOCCUPATIONAL HEALTH HAZARDS OF WORKERS
of Instructional Pedagogies.
Mondal, H., Mondal, S., Ghosal, T., & Mondal, S. (2019). Using Google Forms for Medical
Survey: A Technical Note. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental
Article ID: AG-VO2-I08-07
Physiology, 5(4), 216–218. https://doi.org/10.5530/ijcep.2018.5.4.26
Raju, N. V., & Harinarayana, N. S. (2016). Online survey tools: A case study of Google Forms
Online. National Conference on "Scientific, Computational & Information Research
Trends in Engineering, GSSS-IETW, Mysore.

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