Paper survey processing: how it works

One supplier, one quote, five steps. Here is what happens at each step, what we need from you, and what you get back. The same process applies whether the job is two hundred forms handed out at a clinic or seventy-five thousand mailed to households, with distribution and return arrangements agreed separately.

1. Design: you bring the questions, we build the form.

What you send. Your questions, as a document, a draft layout or the questionnaire you used last time, together with your brand assets, brand guidelines or style guide, and any print, accessibility or clear print requirements. Include any mandatory wording, such as a privacy statement, an ethics reference or return instructions, and the text for supporting materials. Tell us who will complete the form and how the materials will be distributed and returned.

What we do. We combine professional graphic design with specialist form layout, considering your branding, respondents, readability and use of page space. We look for ways to reduce unnecessary pages without compromising legibility or room for answers. We also prepare any supporting artwork included in the brief, such as letters, participant information sheets, instructions, postcards and envelopes.

For automated scanning, we build in the Scantron requirements: registration marks, correctly positioned response areas, page identifiers and any ID or personalisation fields. Response areas use a dropout colour the scanner ignores, and open-ended answer boxes are sized for image clipping. We check routing instructions and page breaks, check the artwork against the scanning specifications and test-scan in-house before production.

What you get. A PDF proof for review and agreed corrections before approval. Your question wording, response options and mandatory statements remain under your control; any queries are referred back to you. Nothing prints until you've signed it off. See form design and supporting artwork for the full service.

2. Print: to scanning specifications, in Australia.

What we do. Your approved form is printed in Australia through our print partners. Single sheets, one or two sides, or saddle-stitched booklets from four to thirty-six pages. Every scannable form is printed in at least two colours: black for the text and the red-spectrum dropout colour around the response areas. Full colour usually costs no more, so your branding can carry through the whole form. Supporting materials agreed for the project, including letters, participant information sheets, instructions, postcards and envelopes, are printed alongside using the approved artwork.

Where the job calls for it, each form is personalised as it's printed: a respondent ID, a lithocode, a barcode or QR code, a name and address positioned for a window envelope, or fields pre-filled so respondents don't have to, such as a site code, a class or a ward.

Recycled stock is available on request.

What you get. Forms that scan. If a form we printed fails to scan because of a print defect, we replace it or capture the data another way, at no cost to you.

3. Distribute: individual mail-outs, bulk delivery or both.

What you send. For individual mail-outs, your mailing list. You can send your respondent list through our secure Australian-hosted file transfer service or your organisation’s nominated secure service. For bulk delivery, the delivery locations, contacts and quantities required. Tell us where completed forms should return and who will arrange any onward delivery to CDS.

What we do. We prepare and distribute the materials using the agreed combination of individual Australia Post mail-outs and bulk deliveries through Australia Post or couriers. Return instructions reflect your project: completed forms may come directly to us, go to your organisation first, or be collected by participating sites and returned in batches.

The outward and return arrangements do not need to be the same. For example, we can mail questionnaires individually while your research team receives the responses and forwards completed forms to CDS in bulk. See distribution and returns for further examples.

Postal services where required. Individual packs are merged, folded where needed, inserted and lodged using the appropriate Australia Post service and barcoding. A Reply Paid return to CDS can be included where arranged, but is not required for every project. Australia Post postage can be charged directly to your account, included as a fixed quoted amount, or estimated and charged at the actual lodgement amount. See our Australia Post postage options for details.

If you're also collecting online, the form, letter or instructions can carry a QR code and a short link to your online survey, or a login unique to each respondent. Respondents choose the mode that suits them.

Follow-up where agreed. We can send a letter, postcard or fresh copy of the survey as a reminder. Targeted exclusions use the respondent-level paper return records, online completion updates and undeliverable records available at the agreed processing stage. Where your organisation or participating sites receive responses first, we agree how and when their updates will be supplied.

What you get. Forms delivered through the agreed channels, with clear arrangements for getting completed forms back to CDS.

4. Receive and scan: individual returns or bulk batches.

What we do. We receive completed forms directly from respondents or in bulk from your organisation and participating sites. We record receipt and process the forms according to the agreed schedule. Daily or weekly fieldwork reporting reflects forms received by CDS and any return information supplied by your team; responses still held elsewhere are not automatically included.

Closed responses, filled in pen or pencil, are read by optical mark recognition on Scantron equipment. Either pen or pencil reads. Before any data is released, three kinds of field are clipped as images and shown to an operator on screen for visual confirmation:

• fields you've told us are critical, such as a respondent ID or a consent question
• questions left blank
• single-answer questions with more than one mark

Open-ended answers are clipped as images and keyed by our operators, spelling-corrected by default or exactly as written if you prefer. Every returned form is also captured as a full-page image.

Behind this sits a scanning application built for your form: where each response area is, whether it's closed or open, what value each answer carries, and which fields go to an operator. It's checked on the first real batch of returns before the run proceeds. How blanks, double marks and fold-line artefacts are treated is agreed with you in writing. Some rules are set before print, and some are set once we've seen how respondents actually filled the form in. The agreed rules are then applied to the whole run.

Every sheet is printed with a batch and serial number as it's scanned, so each row in your data leads back to one physical sheet. Counts are reconciled through receipt, scanning and data delivery, with outward distribution records available where CDS arranged dispatch. Any processing discrepancy is resolved before the data goes to you.

What you get. Return counts on the agreed basis, and data that a person has looked at where it matters. Respondent-ID reports are available on request as an extra; IDs are captured at scanning and can lag behind receipt counts.

5. Deliver: the data file, the images, and what happens to the paper.

What you get. An Excel file, or CSV if you prefer, with one row per form, the open-ended responses alongside the closed ones, and column names and values agreed with you before delivery. Each row carries a link to the PDF image of that form, so the original, including handwriting, is one click from any value. Where forms carry respondent IDs, those IDs link each row back to your supplied participant or sample records, regardless of the distribution and return method. We deliver your files through our secure Australian-hosted file transfer service or your organisation’s nominated secure service.

What happens to the paper. Completed forms are held for three months, or longer by agreement, in case you need to go back to them. After that they are securely shredded, or returned to you if you'd rather keep them. The electronic data and images are held for the same period after delivery, then deleted.

Why every form we scan is one we've built.

Optical mark recognition doesn't read a page the way a person does. The scanner finds the page by its registration marks, then reads darkness at positions it has been told to expect. The response boxes themselves are printed in a dropout colour the scanner is built to ignore, so all it sees is the respondent's mark. Move a box a few millimetres, print it in an ink the scanner can see, or shift the page in the envelope and the read can fail or read the wrong position.

That is why specialist form layout is the first step of every scanning job, and why we don't scan forms designed or printed elsewhere. If you already have a questionnaire, send it to us and we'll rebuild it as a scannable version. The questions stay; the layout changes. The accuracy comes from setting the form up correctly before the first copy is printed, rather than trying to repair problems after scanning.

For a small run, manual data entry may cost less than scanner set-up. Your existing form can be used as it stands; PDF images are optional at extra cost.

Paper alongside online.

Paper reaches people online surveys miss: older respondents, households without reliable internet, and people who won't click a link in an email but will fill in a form at the kitchen table. Many of the surveys we run are mixed mode for exactly that reason. Sent to people who haven't answered online, a paper form can also lift the overall response rate.

The form, letter or instructions can carry a QR code and a short link to your online survey, or a login unique to each respondent so an online answer and a paper one come back against the same record. Paper can be mailed individually or distributed through sites, with return instructions suited to the project. You run the online side and we run the paper side, and you receive the paper data in a file you can merge with your online responses. We agree how paper and online completion information will be supplied before any targeted reminder mailing.

Tell us about your survey.

Tell us the quantity, approximate pages per form, how forms will be distributed and returned, and when you need the data. Let us know about any supporting artwork or specific branding and accessibility requirements.

Get a quote or call 03 9873 0050