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Can I pull random data from an excel file into a question stem?

  • 29 April 2018
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I have a large database of tweets that I need to randomly pull into a question, and ask people to then rate the tweets on several dimensions. It's my understanding that I'll likely need to use custom code for this, but I have not idea where to start. Two things that I know I need are (1) getting a random sample of tweets to each survey respondent, and (2) keeping track of how many times each tweet has been rated (so that I don't keep tweets in the sample pool once they've received enough ratings).
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Best answer by TomG 30 April 2018, 15:45

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How many is "large"? What programming skills do you have? Do you have a web server?
N = 25,000 tweets (so maybe not crazy large)

Very light programming skills - have worked in R to tap into APIs... which I've hear might also be an option here...

I don't have a web server, but my org/ school might.

Thanks for your help!
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@Grace_1,

With that many tweets, I think your best option is to use web service scripts, so hopefully you can get access to a web server. You would put all your tweets in an SQL database table. A script would execute a query to randomly select a tweet and return it to Qualtrics. At the end of the survey (when you know you have a complete) a second web service script would run to update the database that the tweet was used.

Unfortunately, it also means you'll have to learn something about a web scripting language (e.g., PHP, Python, etc.) and some sql (e.g., MySQL)
I have a similar question but for a smaller number of data points. I have 1,000 different short text excerpts (~300-500 words). I want to present five of them to each pair of participants and ask them to do some classifications. I don't need randomization, but I need to be able to compare responses by pair.
I also lack programming skills, but I'm not sure the extent to which they are necessary in this case. Anyone?
Thank you!

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