Incomplete Survey Responses

About Incomplete Responses

After a respondent starts a survey, they have a certain amount of time allotted for them to complete the survey, regardless of the survey’s activation status or expiration dates. Sometimes, respondents will get partway through a survey before they quit. The Incomplete survey responses survey option allows you to determine whether to record or delete incomplete responses, and after how long.

In this page, you will learn all about incomplete responses—how Qualtrics stores survey progress, how participants can return to finish a survey, and how incomplete responses are reported in the dataset.

Understanding Incomplete Responses

As a respondent progresses through a survey (navigates to the next page in a survey), the answers they input are securely sent to Qualtrics servers and stored as responses in progress. This saving happens automatically as they navigate to the next page—no need for respondents to click any sort of “Save” button.

However, please note that the responses are only saved as the respondent progresses to the next page of the survey. If you have a survey that is only on one page, Qualtrics would not be able to save any progress the respondent makes on the survey since there is not another page for the respondent to progress to. Instead, in this case, the respondent would have to complete their response in one sitting. Qualtrics recommends periodically adding page breaks in your survey to avoid this issue.

Once a participant completes the survey, their response is moved from the Responses in Progress section over to Recorded Responses, where it will show up in reports and in downloaded survey data.

If a participant closes their web browser without finishing the survey, the response will stay in responses in progress for a set amount of time, just in case the participant comes back to finish. This amount of time is the one you set in survey options. If the participant doesn’t come back within the allotted time frame, the response will automatically be closed as-is and moved over to Recorded Responses.

The Incomplete survey responses setting in your survey options allows you to choose how long partial responses will remain responses in progress before being closed and moved over to Recorded Responses.

Setting a Time Frame for Incomplete Survey Responses

In this section, we explain how to set the amount of time during which incomplete survey responses can remain complete, before you either delete them or record them.

1. Open Survey options in the Survey tab.
2. Go to the Responses section.
3. Select what you’d like to happen when the deadline is met.
   • Record: Record the response when the deadline is met.
     Attention: Responses at 0% progress will be deleted, even if this option is set to record.
   • Delete: Delete the response when the deadline is met.
     Attention: If you choose Delete, then even responses in progress that you close manually or responses in progress that you close when deactivating the survey will be deleted!
4. Select a time frame.
   Qtip: Whether you decide to record or delete, your options are 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or a year.
5. Choose when the time frame begins counting down. Your options include:
   • Start survey start time: When your respondent first started the survey.
     Example: Let’s say I configure it so that partial responses are recorded one week after the respondent starts the survey. I send out the survey on August 1 and the respondent begins their response on August 3 but does not finish it. The respondent has until August 10 to complete their response.
   • Last time they edited a response: When your respondent last edited their survey response.
     Example: Let’s say I configure it so that record partial responses are recorded one week after the respondent’s last activity. The respondent begins the survey on August 1. They close the survey without completing it, generating a response in progress. Their current deadline is August 8. The respondent revisits their response and edits it on August 5 but still does not complete their response. Their new deadline is August 12.

Saving Survey Progress

Each time a respondent switches pages in the survey, the answers they’ve provided so far are sent securely to Qualtrics servers, and saved as part of their partial response.

For participants who don’t finish the survey in one sitting, you can allow respondents to finish later – that way if they leave the survey, they can start right where they left off the next time they click the survey link. See the linked support page for more details. Note that this option isn’t necessary for surveys distributed through email or SMS with personal links, because then progress is saved by default.

Incomplete Survey Response Settings vs. Survey Availability

The survey availability date determines how long participants have to use survey links (anonymous link, emailed links, personal links, etc.) to start new responses. Once this date passes, all survey links will expire and no participant can start a new survey response.

However, participants who have already started their surveys will be able to complete their responses for a limited period of time. How long they have is determined by the Incomplete survey responses setting.

Rather than rely on the setting for incomplete survey responses, you can choose to close all responses in progress when you deactivate the survey. This will close all surveys regardless of how far along they are in the deadline for incomplete survey responses, and it will stop anyone from submitting after that point.

Identifying Incomplete Responses in Your Data Set

If your incomplete survey response setting is set to record partial responses, you may want to identify these responses in your data. This is easily done by filtering your responses by the survey metadata field Finished is False.

1. Navigate to the Data section of the Data & Analysis tab.
   
2. Click Add Filter.
3. Hover over Survey Metadata.
4. Select Finished.
5. Choose Is as the operator.
   
6. Select False.

Qtip: Add a column for the Progress field to your data set to see how far into your survey your respondents got before dropping off. This can help inform where you may need to make edits to your survey to encourage respondents to keep going.

FAQs