I tried exporting data from a Qualtrics survey to SPSS and encountered two major problems requiring laborious corrections.
- In a matrix table question, say Q10, there are 10 parts, so they go from 10_1 to 10_10. However, Qualtrics arbitrarily numbers them from Q10_1 to Q10_5 then jumps to Q_8 to Q10_12 i.e. all 10 items are there just the variable names are wrong.
- An even more exasperating problem is in assigning values in multiple choice, single answer and multiple answer questions. e.g. question on education with 9 different levels of education listed in the survey in the natural order of less than high school to doctoral degree or better. One would expect Qualtrics to assign 1 through 9 to the categories. It does not it randomizes and assigns whatever it pleases.
In a lengthy survey, these issues create unnecessary slog work for the researcher. I wonder why Qualtrics cannot put safeguards to prevent this. Ideally, the researcher should able to see the numbers that would be assigned to the answers at all times and these should change as the survey is edited all the way until it is activated.
