How to make a political compass-esque quiz?

sdiff

Keep in mind I don't know any programming yet(though I'm willing to learn/read etc.), but I want one that I can easily add to my website, a similar "strongly disagree to strongly agree" range of answers to a good few questions follow by plotting your result on a graph.
It won't actually have anything to do with politics but it will be a similar style.
So what's my best bet? Do I have to learn HTML? Java? Flash? I'm completely clueless regarding programming atm but I'm willing to learn. Keep in mind I plan on using "Hostgator" to make my website but if there's something better for what I'm thinking of please tell me.

Pygmalion

The way I see it this could basically be done with any of:

• HTML + Javascript
• Server-side scripting (PHP most likely)
• Browser plugin (e.g. Java or Flash)

Personally I think HTML + Javascript would probably be the easiest, it would also be the easiest to integrate with an existing site or design.
PHP (or some other server-side scripting language) would allow you to store people's results, hook it up to a database etc., that way you could perhaps collect statistics about people's choices (it would be interesting to get the average left-wing:right-wing ratio per country for example :P).
Doing it in PHP pretty much implies learning HTML anyway, as that's what you'd be outputting, so you'd be learning that first either way.

Browser plugins would in my opinion be the worst of both worlds, but I'm willing to admit that my constant frustration with them as a user influences that and others might disagree :P.

Worth checking out if there's already something that does this, no point going and spending weeks/months learning to programming and making one if there's already a free one you could just install and provide the data for.

amen

it would be interesting to get the average left-wing:right-wing ratio per country for example

a bit of post but it wouldn't give you this. At best it would give you a left/right wing ratio of visitors to your site that actually completed your poll.

A general election or a correct statistical poll using valid sampling methods would be need to provide a true left/right wing ratio that was accurate to decent %.

sdiff

amen wrote: »

a bit of post but it wouldn't give you this. At best it would give you a left/right wing ratio of visitors to your site that actually completed your poll.

A general election or a correct statistical poll using valid sampling methods would be need to provide a true left/right wing ratio that was accurate to decent %.

Political compass actuallly does something like this. Regardless I don't think the website I'm making would give very interesting statistics

Pygmalion

amen wrote: »

a bit of post but it wouldn't give you this. At best it would give you a left/right wing ratio of visitors to your site that actually completed your poll.

A general election or a correct statistical poll using valid sampling methods would be need to provide a true left/right wing ratio that was accurate to decent %.

Well yeah it wouldn't necessarily be accurate enough as a "real" source of data, but I meant it would be cool enough to have just for the interest of users if it gets popular enough.

Procasinator

I agree pretty much with Pygmalion. HostGator has PHP5, so you could use:

- PHP to validate inputs, store data, query date for display.
- SQLite to store results (embedded into PHP, so ready to use out-of-the-box).
- HTML to display the results.

Groinshot

What about using something like surveymonkey?

Sid_Justice

just integrate a google form into your website

sdiff

Groinshot wrote: »

What about using something like surveymonkey?

Thanks, but as far as I know surveymonkey just gives the results to the survey maker? I'll have a look at google docs, thanks.

Groinshot

sdiff wrote: »

Thanks, but as far as I know surveymonkey just gives the results to the survey maker? I'll have a look at google docs, thanks.

Yup, tehy give you back the details, and it's up to you to do something with them. Google have alovely little charts api that you could use to present the data?

sdiff

Groinshot wrote: »

Yup, tehy give you back the details, and it's up to you to do something with them. Google have alovely little charts api that you could use to present the data?

Oh right, I'll give it a try then. Thanks!

Groinshot

sdiff wrote: »

Oh right, I'll give it a try then. Thanks!

Rememb er that you can do that with any of the solutions above. The google charts uses javascript, so you can just feed the data to google and it will display it, regardless as to whether you use surveymonkey, or get the results yourself.