After some internal testing, we've discovered that a partial respondent does NOT see any survey edits made after they've begun their survey. It seems that a partial respondent is stuck within whatever version of the survey they were when starting the survey.
It makes sense to me that this would be the case for any questions they've already completed, but I was hopeful that questions not yet seen would be updated.
One case of this is when we incentivize our respondents. Let's say we're incentivizing completes at $20. The last page of our survey typically says something like "We'll be sending your $20 in a couple days". To encourage more completes in the middle of fielding, we might decide to increase our incentive to $40. So we would update the last page to reflect $40. The reminder message goes out to all partial and non-responsive contacts indicating that we have increased incentives. New respondents will see the $40 on the last page but partial respondents will still see $20.
What is the best practice for dealing with survey changes for partial respondents? Is there an option to move or convert partial respondents to the newest published version of the survey?
Would a "Re-take" response push them through the new version of the survey saving their old responses for questions already seen?
Appreciate any feedback.
Survey Edits Not Shown for Partial Respondents
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You could delete the partials then if people use their existing link they will start over using the new version of the survey.
I think re-takes get the new version of the survey as well, but I'm not 100% sure, so you should test. You would have to close the partials, then get individual retake links for those partial responses and somehow distribute them to each respondent.
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Hi TerryH ,
As you've found out the hard way, Qualtrics doesn't offer much built-in flexibility with pushing out survey changes to partial respondents.
In my experience, retake links will enable partial respondents to see the latest changes made to a survey, if the number of respondents in your dataset makes that practical. However, you must close the responses first before you can create and share the retake link, which can be problematic under certain conditions (see https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/9287/closed-in-progress-responses-should-not-be-deleted-when-survey-options-are-delete-after-1-week#latest).
One other thing you might consider doing is, for those respondents who have opened the survey but not answered any questions, you can delete their partial response; when they click the survey link it will create a new session in the latest version of the survey.
TomG & MatthewM Thanks Tom and Matthew. I suppose it's good to know that I'm not missing anything.
I'd be hesitant to delete partial responses especially in cases where respondents might be half or three-quarters of way through a 20 minute survey.
However, a strong majority of our partial responses are those who did not actually start their surveys. It would make sense to just delete those and have them start fresh.
Good to know that the re-takes are an option but I could see that being problematic when sending out reminders through Qualtrics mail system. Does Qualtrics consider the original survey closed when using re-take links? I'd want to be sure that they are not getting both the reminder messages with links to their original survey and then a separate invitation containing their re-take link.
Depending on the number of partial respondents, I'd probably change my approach...
Many: Closing out any partials that are more than, say, 50% completes and scrap them. Delete any partials that are less than 50% complete so that they can start fresh.
Few: Re-take links for any partials that are more than, say, 50% completes and send them separately. Delete any partials that are less than 50% complete so that they can start fresh.
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To answer your question "Does Qualtrics consider the original survey closed when using re-take links? I'd want to be sure that they are not getting both the reminder messages with links to their original survey and then a separate invitation containing their re-take link.", yes, Qualtrics still counts it as closed.
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