It turns out the problem is the way Excel imports CSV files, which by default does not support UTF-8 data. There is an easy work around described by the Information Technology Group at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton:

Follow the steps outlined below to use Microsoft Excel to open a .csv file that uses UTF-8 character encoding.

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Click on the Data menu bar option.
3. Click on the From Text icon.
4. Navigate to the location of the file that you want to import.  Click on the filename and then click on the Import button.  The Text Import Wizard – Step 1 or 3 window will now appear on the screen.
5. Choose the file type that best describes your data – Delimited or Fixed Width.
6. Choose 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) from the drop-down list that appears next to File origin.
7. Click on the Next button to display the Text Import Wizard – Step 2 or 3 window.
8. Place a checkmark next to the delimiter that was used in the file you wish to import into Microsoft Excel.  The Data preview window will show you how your data will appear based on the delimiter that you chose.
9. Click on the Next button to display the Text Import Wizard – Step 3 of 3.
10. Choose the appropriate data format for each column of data that you want to import.  You also have the option to not import one or more columns of data if you want.
11. Click on the Finish button to finish importing your data into Microsoft Excel.

This is what we suggest.

1.  Download and install Libre Office from here http://www.libreoffice.org/
2. Open Libre Office and click ‘Spreadsheet’
3. Click Open and select your CSV file
4. On the following screen make sure the following options are ticked
   1. Seperated by > Comma
   2. Character Set > Unicode (UTF-8)

   3. Language > Language you require e.g. chinese

See the screen shot below

That should work for you.

This is often due to ‘robots’ and search engine spiders that are trawling the internet.

If your survey is ‘online’ and public, you may see this occurring.

Because of this we’ve added a new feature ‘delete blank participants’ which will allow you to ‘one click’ clean up your participant dataset.

This will obviously vary if their is a reward for completion e.g. payment, research credits etc..

You will also get an increased drop out rate if you have a particularly long survey with many questions.

Finally, it should be noted that each time you test your survey using the ‘Full preview’ mode a new participant is created.

If your dataset is only valid if you use 100% completers, a data download option for downloading ONLY complete datasets is available.

However, you have a number of options of HOW the data is formatted prior to download.

For example, if you have a question asking ‘What do you think of dogs’? with response options:
– Love dogs
– Like dogs
– No opinion
– Dislike dogs
– Hate dogs

the default download will be the full question text at the top, and then for each participant the response text they gave e.g. ‘love dogs’

Every element of this can be easily changed. For example, instead of the full question text, you could have simply the question number. Or the question number prefixed with custom text based on the section.

The response give could also be changed to numeric values e.g. 1-5 instead of the text responses. The options are shown below:

This allows much more flexibility, especially when importing into software such as SPSS which require numbers for analysis.

Finally, you can download data as a ‘quick view’ CSV file which tallies total values instead of displaying individual responses. An example question from this type of  dataset in excel is shown below.

Options for online viewing include bar graphs, pie charts and 3d pies. Examples are shown below – note you can customised the colour, graph type and graph size.

– Participant ID (Unique)
– Date/Time Started
– Date/Time Finished
– Total time taken
– IP Address
– Question Order
– Section Order

This is then followed by all of the question responses.

You can choose to customise the way data is downloaded in the ‘Download > Download Options’ tab. This allows you to prefix each section with custom text and even replace text options (Very good, good, average etc..) with numbers (1,2,3 etc…). This is incredibly useful when importing into SPSS.

CSV files can be imported into either excel or SPSS and there already exists  many tutorials online  showing how this can be done.

Click here to view a tutorial on how to import CSV files into SPSS

Click here to view a tutorial on how to import CSV files into Excel