Google Drive Forms and Shared Collaboration

Google Drive forms now allows for collaborative development!  When you first open the form with the new feature the window shown below pops up.  You can click on the Learn more button for help or go to http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87809&topic=1360904&ctx=topic

 

 Google forms is a serious contender with database software because creating a form is so intuitive and the output of the form is stored in a spreadsheet or comma separated value file.   Google forms provides seven  types of text entry without having to use database tools or the necessity of creating lookup tables as noted below:

Text — respondents provide short answers

Paragraph text — respondents provide longer answers

Multiple choice — respondents select one option from among several

Check boxes — respondents select as many options as they’d like

Choose from a list — respondents select one option from a drop-down menu

Scale — respondents rank something along a scale of numbers (e.g., from 1 to 5)

Grid — respondents select a point from a two-dimensional grid

 

Just as in other Google Drive apps, you can share the URL with specified others or make visible to everyone.

Google Drive Forms may be a solution that nurses use when working on research and transformation projects that require users to complete a questionnaire. Since the output is stored in a spreadsheet the data can be prepared for statistical analysis.

Google Drive Spreadsheet - Part 1

Google Drive spreadsheet (http://drive.google.com) is a popular choice for a cloud solution because of the many features common to desktop solutions and the ability to share collaborative editing.  Google Drive is available for the Window OS X, Mac OS X, iPad, and Android mobile devices.  An alternative cloud spreadsheet solution, SkyDrive, is available for users who have Microsoft Office desktop or Microsoft Office 365, a cloud solution.  SkyDrive is available for Mac and Windows mobile devices.  However, for the purpose of this blog, discussion of cloud-based spreadsheet software is limited to Google Drive because of its non-commercial nature, popularity and robust features.

Google Drive users get 5 GB of free storage for all Google Doc files, including spreadsheets). Google Drive is also a downloadable app for Windows and Mac computers, as well as Apple and Android mobile devices.  The app allows users to sync Google Doc files with either a Mac or Windows PC, providing a backup solution.  Google Drive files can be organized using folders and users have the ability to search for files and preview them.

The menu for a Google Drive spreadsheet is similar to other spreadsheet software (figure1).  

Figure1 Google Drive Spreadsheet

The Google Spreadsheet app includes text and number editing features.  The Functions menu is used to create formulas  and use common formula functions, such as sum, average, count, max, and min. The functions menu is available from the the Insert menu and also the sum symbol on the toolbar (figure 2).

Figure 2 Formula Menu with Common Formula Functions

Information on additional functions is available online at https://support.google.com/drive/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=25273&page=table.cs