Pipe in Text for Response Choice from External Source | XM Community
Question

Pipe in Text for Response Choice from External Source

  • 7 October 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 26 views

Hello,

I am designing a survey to be fielded in Brazil about political attitudes using the Qualtrics platform.  I am including a knowledge battery, a short quiz of the respondents' political knowledge. For one of the questions, I'd like to ask if the respondent can name the mayor of their home city.  Ideally, I'd like respondents to be presented with a multiple choice question, where the answer choices include the correct name of the mayor of their home city, along with the names of a random selection of three other mayors from the same state.  So, I'd like to pipe in answer choices based on the respondent's city.  This is complicated as there are over 5000 cities (municipalities) in Brazil, so it is infeasible to create a different question for each municipality.  Is there a way to pipe in answer choices from an external source, like a database or Excel file?

2 replies

Badge +2
Hi @pluto2493,

In order to pipe in the answer choices from an external sources, you may upload the database to Contacts field. Then, you will need to declare the variables in Survey Flow.

On the question text, click on Piped Text and select Embedded Data Field. For an example, this will put something like ${e://Field/FirstName} into the field.

You may read more here (https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/standard-elements/embedded-data/)

Thank you.
Userlevel 7
Badge +27
The problem with @TohS's solution is that you would have to know the respondent's city in advance. Even if you did know, you would have to manage a lot of redundant data.

A better approach is to store the data in an external database and use a survey flow web service call to retrieve it and populate embedded variables that you pipe into your question. You'll need to write a web script that accepts the city as an input, queries the database, and outputs the data as json.

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