Quest vs. Qualtrics: A complete comparison for social, behavioral, and educational researchers
Built for researchers by researchers, Quest provides powerful, easy-to-use survey tools to capture high-quality data from adults, teens, and children as young as five years old.
Quick comparison
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| What it’s best for | For educational, social, and behavioral research | Enterprise business surveys and sentiment |
| Child-friendly data collection | Proprietary survey methods, developed with the US Department of Education and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, give children as young as 5 years old a voice in research | No unique features for collecting data from children |
| Security and compliance | Strong data security protects privacy of respondents’ data (HIPAA and FERPA compliant) | Strong data security protects privacy of respondents’ data (HIPAA and FERPA compliant) |
| Support | Quest Team Members meet with you to design, launch, and analyze your surveys Technical support within 1 business day | Professional services for additional cost Technical support within 1 business day |
| Price | Annual Research Team license: $167/month | Academic license: $420+/month |
Let’s take a deep dive
Quest vs. Qualtrics in detail
Question types
Both Quest and Qualtrics have all the question types you need to conduct high-quality research. Only Quest has specific capabilities, validated through research with the US Department of Education, to collect accurate responses from children as young as five years old.
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| Basic Dropdowns, open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions |
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| Intermediate Menu grids, matrices, drag and drops |
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| Advanced Sliders, Likert scales, image choices |
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| Child-friendly data collection Audio, cartoon/avatar assistant |
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Survey customization
Both Quest and Qualtrics give you the ability to customize your surveys to engage respondents and follow your organization’s brand guidelines.
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| Fully customizable text with HTML |
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| Custom header and footer |
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| Customizable navigation buttons |
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| Survey progress bar |
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| Images Backgrounds, images with customizable HTML, image response options |
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| Audio Upload your own or generate audio from text-to-speech |
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| Video |
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Survey settings
Both Quest and Qualtrics give you the ability to create sophisticated surveys that branch on respondents’ choices and protect your data through data validation and fraud detection.
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| Advanced branching logic |
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| Question validation |
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| Text limit validation |
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| Regex validation |
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| Email address validation |
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| Customizable validation messages |
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| Question randomization |
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| Text piping |
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Survey distribution
Both Quest and Qualtrics give you the ability to distribute surveys and assessments through different communication channels. Both include SMS and prevent the repeated use of survey links, which increases data accuracy.
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| Anonymous and personalized links |
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| Live survey URL A single, anonymous link for all respondents |
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| Email your survey Send your survey to a list of known respondents through the platform |
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| Reminder emails |
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| SMS survey link distribution |
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Analysis and reporting
Both Quest and Qualtrics provide give you multiple methods to work with the data you’ve collected. These methods include the native reporting within the platform or data exports to external analysis tools, such as SPSS.
Unlike Qualtrics, Quest makes coding easy by providing a centralized location to set up and view all of your coding. With Quest, you can also copy coding to all survey questions that have matching response choices.
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| Efficient coding Centralized location for all coding |
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| Downloadable codebook |
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| Raw data export |
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| Multilevel filtering |
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| Data visualization |
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| Customizable reports Visualize PDFs |
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| Track respondents’ data over time Survey metrics, queries with multiple data collection waves |
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Security and compliance
Both Quest and Qualtrics provide high levels of data security. Many survey tools either don’t comply with government regulations (HIPAA and/or FERPA) or charge much more to include these features.
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| Password-protected surveys |
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| Respondent anonymity assurance |
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| User roles and permissions |
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| HIPAA/other compliance |
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Support and training
Quest and Qualtrics both provide robust documentation for their survey platforms and technical support over the phone and email. Quest stands out by including live expertise from our Quest Team Members, research specialists who are available to help you with every aspect of research design, collection, and analysis.
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| Online support center |
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| Technical support over the hone and email |
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| Survey design, collection, and data management support from a dedicated team member |
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Price comparison
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| Price | Annual Research Team license: $167/month | Academic license: $420+/month |
Where we excel
Best for...
Quest is the best choice for social, behavioral, and educational research. When you use Quest, you get all the features you need to collect high-quality data.
- Social, behavioral and educational research
- Program evaluation
- Child/teen studies
- Enterprise feedback
- Market research
- Customer experience