Introduction to Qualtrics

The Quotas section of Qualtrics allows you to count how many respondents have met one or more conditions in your survey and control what happens when the quota is met. To access this section, select the ‘Quotas’ icon in the navigation menu on the far left of the screen. It looks like this:

Creating a quota

The conditions used for quotas can be based on survey questions, embedded data or other quotas. You can also choose from a range of actions that happen when a quota is met. For example, if a survey quota has already been filled, you could end the survey for the respondent or hide a question or block. You could also use branch logic, skip logic or display logic to customise what happens. For example, display logic could be used to hide a particular choice or choices for a question if the quota has been met.

You can also use a quota to limit the total number of people who take your survey. For information about the different ways you can use quotas, see the Qualtrics support page on quotas.

Example

Let’s use a quota to limit the number of people who take your Test Survey to 50. Select the Quotas icon and then Add a quota. Choose Simple Logic Quota and select Create quota. Select the name of the quota, currently ‘New Quota’ in the top-left of the screen, and change it to something more descriptive, such as Response Limit. Then change the quota from 100 to 50 using the box in the top-right of the screen.

Next, set the condition that will increase the quota count. In this example, you want every survey respondent to be counted as part of the quota, so keep Question selected and choose a question that everyone will see, such as the first question containing the survey introduction. Select Select Choice, choose the question again and keep Is Displayed selected.

Finally, scroll down and choose what you want to happen when the quota has been met. Select Quota options to expand this section if needed. In this case, the best choice is Prevent all new survey sessions. You can then choose to show a custom inactive survey message, which you can create in a similar way to an end of survey message, as explained in the End of survey message section of the Survey builder page. You can also choose to Keep & record or Delete responses that are over the quota. In this example, this would only be relevant if two people submitted their surveys at the same time.

To test that your quota works as expected, you can increase the quota count to its maximum value. Select the 0 in 0/50 in the top-right of the screen, change the quota count to 50, then select Save and Confirm. If you preview the survey, you should see your inactive survey message.

Once you have checked that the quota is working correctly, return to Quotas and reset the quota count to 0. You can do this in the same way that you previously changed it to 50. Alternatively, select the quota name from the menu on the left (Response Limit for this example), select the three dots to display the menu, then select Reset quota and Confirm.