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Multiple surveys - tracking sample persons, sending automatic e-mails, reminding data

  • 5 November 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 72 views

Hi,

As I started planning my thesis procedure, I encountered a few problems in Qualtrics related to my plan of study. First, let me explain how it will look like, so that you have a proper knowledge needed to be able to help me.

First, I distribute first part of my survey via social media. I ask for e-mail address and a specific text response, which is crucial for other parts of the research.

Second, I'd like to send an e-mail with a link to 2nd survey exactly 10 days after finishing 1st survey. Then, I plan to send 2nd survey link to participants 4 times, every 10 days.

Last part is - I'd like to send 2nd survey slightly modified (3 questions added) for the 6th time and finish the study.


Here are my questions:

1. Is there a need to create 3 surveys, or is there a possibility to create some kind of branch like "if 2nd survey sent for the 6th time -> show 3 new questions"?

2. Is there a possibility to have responses from all surveys in 1 data report? If there is, should it be done via query strings?

3. How am I able to track participants responses throughout all surveys? I guess I don't even need to do anything special, as I have their e-mail address after 1st survey, and the other ones are sent via e-mail. It seems to me that turning on "recipient e-mail" contact field column in data & analysis report would be enough, am I right? Then matching all the responses with the same recipient e-mail.

4. How do I set automatic e-mails with links to 2nd survey 10 days after finishing 1st survey? I guess that is done through e-mail triggers with piped text containing response to e-mail address question. Do I need to use contact list triggers?

5. Is there a way to customize the time when the e-mail is sent? I planned to send the e-mail 10 days after finishing 1st survey, but it seems like there is no option like 10 days.

6. Should I create separate surveys for each instance of filling in 2nd survey by participants, or can it be done via the same survey?

7. Is there a way to resend 2nd survey 4 times every 10 days and then send the last survey automatically? Is it done just like automatic e-mail with links to 2nd survey? (point 4.)

8. Is there a way to remind participants in 2nd survey their response from 1st survey? Again, is it done via query strings?

I would really appreciate your help. Thank you.

1 reply

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Hi @w1cked that's quite a complex design! I'm just a fellow Qubie myself and haven't tried anything quite this ambitious but I'll take a shot at answering some of these questions based on my 3 years of experience with the Research Core.

1. It's hard to say whether you need 3 surveys or can pull this off with one. There might be a way to embed data to a respondent's record after completing a survey that can be used in Display Logic or a Survey Flow Branch. What I usually do to test out things like this is to create a small scale dummy survey and fill it out myself to test out (and refine, if possible) the functionality.

2. If you find #1 can't be done but you want to merge the data from all three surveys into one, you should be able to utilize the response import feature. (I'm not sure if you're also referring to the social media survey as well; depending on the number of questions it has, you could either carry that through to the main survey as Embedded Data or use the response import feature.

3. If you're using Contact Lists to distribute the survey then each response should be linked to an email (or custom identifier, if you set one up) that you can use to match responses post-data collection.

4. Use the "Actions" feature to send the automatic emails. It can be configured to send individual email invitations automatically to a different survey at a time of your choosing, using an email address you collect via social media in your first screener survey.

5. With Actions you can pick between 1-30 days to send out the second invite (or even 1-30 months!).

6. The fewer surveys you have to manage, the better, especially when they are duplicates or near-duplicates. You should be able to use the same survey for each iteration.

7. I'm not sure; I would suggest trying to set this up with a small scale dummy survey. You might first look into using Actions for this part, to determine whether or not any of it can be automated. If Actions won't support this but the resends have to be sent at exactly 10 day intervals (no more or less) then what you would probably have to do is create a separate email list of each day's respondents to your initial social media screener survey, and use those lists to send it out all four times. I'm not sure how many days you're keeping open data collection with your screener survey, but of course the longer that is open, the more complicated this part would become. In the end you may have to resort to using Anonymous links for this part of your study rather than Individual links to enable the distribution and collection through Qualtrics.

8. By "remind", do you mean let the respondents see their answers to the previous survey? There a few different ways to approach this but it would be largely determined by how many questions you have on the survey and what type they are (multiple choice, open-ended, etc.).

Good luck with your thesis!

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