Introduction to Qualtrics

The Survey options section of Qualtrics allows you to make other changes to your survey settings, from adding a back button to setting up email triggers. To access this section of Qualtrics, click on the ‘Survey options’ icon on the navigation menu at the far left of the screen. It looks like this:

To add a back button to your survey, for example, select Responses from the left menu, then toggle on Back button (note that you may then want to change the text of this button, either for the whole survey or for specific block(s), as detailed in the Look & feel and Survey builder pages respectively).

As another example, if you wish to add question numbers that are visible to participants then select General from the left menu and toggle on Question numbers (although note that if you want to indicate survey progress to participants it is recommended you add in a progress bar, as detailed in the Look & feel page).

While there are many other things you can change in ‘Survey options’, the remainder of this section focuses on three of the most common and slightly more advanced: how to score answers, how to set up email triggers, and how to set quotas.

Scoring

You can use scoring to assign point values to a question or questions in your survey. Furthermore, you can sum scores using one or more categories and can display these scores at the end of each question, at the end of the survey, or indeed as part of any subsequent question/s. You can even provide scores in an email as part of email triggers, as detailed in Email triggers below.

Note: Only certain question types (including multiple choice, matrix, text entry and slider) are compatible with scoring; see here for a complete list.

Calculating and displaying scores

Scoring is edited in the scoring section of the survey flow menu.

Example: Let’s add a travel knowledge question to your Test Survey and use this to calculate a Travel readiness score, then provide this score and relevant travel information to the participant.

To do this, first add a new ‘Travel Readiness’ block to your Test Survey, then navigate to the Survey flow section and move the new block so that it sits outside the previously created branches. It should look something like this:

Next, add a question with options relating to travel readiness. An example has been created below, but you could create a shorter version if you wish.

In the Answer type section of the “Edit question” menu on the left, make sure that you select Allow multiple answers for this question so that participants can choose multiple statements (alternatively, you could create a set of separate ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions if preferred).

To add scoring to this question go to ‘Survey options’ and to Scoring, then select the Score category up the top and click on Manage Categories…

Now select Score to rename it (make sure you click on the text itself), for example to Travel Readiness (while this is optional, it is helpful to give your scoring categories relevant names - particularly if you are going to have more than one). At this point you could also select to have the scoring shown at the end of the survey or after each question, however we will used piped text to display the score in context for this example instead. Keep the Scoring Options box for Treat empty statistics for scoring categories as 0 selected. Select Save.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Travel Readiness’ block and to the question that is going to be scored, then assign a score to each statement. While these might sometimes be different, in this case just assign a value of 1 to each statement by selecting it. Once you have done this, select Back to survey builder from the top to return to the survey.

To display this score to the participant in context on the following page of the survey, add a ‘Text/Graphic’ question below the travel statement question – adding a page break in between so that the score shows on the next page. Next, use piped text (as detailed in the Question behaviour section of the Survey builder page) to include the score in a sentence. When you do this, you will need to select ‘Scoring’, ‘Travel Readiness’ and ‘Score’ for the piped text. Make sure to add”/6.” after the piped text so that it appears as a score out of 6 to the participant. Your question should look something like the following (note the score ID may be different in your piped text):

Using logic with scoring

While you can also include information in this statement about what to do in the case of different scores, as a next step you may want to customise your survey to provide different responses to the participant based on their score.

One way of doing this is using branch logic, and in particular you would use this if you wanted to display a different end of survey message depending on the participant’s score. For instructions on doing this see the Qualtrics support page on displaying messages based on scoring.

Example: In our Test Survey we will use display logic (detailed in the Question behaviour section of the Survey builder page) to display a different response for three different score ranges. To do this, first move the previously created question to a new block below the ‘Travel Readiness’ block, perhaps titled Travel Readiness Results. Next adjust the text so that it is relevant to people who did not obtain a good score (for example, a score between 0 and 2), then add two more similar questions which are relevant to people who obtained a good and perfect score respectively. The result should look something like this:

In order to add display logic for these questions based on the scoring, you first need to add an Embedded Data element (as detailed in the Embedded data section of the Survey flow page) to the survey flow. This needs to sit below the ‘Travel Readiness’ block (i.e. below where the score is calculated) and above the ‘Travel Readiness Results’ block (i.e. above where the data is used).

Embedded data requires both a name (referred to as a field) and a value. Sometimes you might choose the field from the drop down menu, but in this case you need to create one. Type the name you would like to give it inside the box. This could be the same name as the score (e.g. ‘Travel Readiness’), or a variation of this, or something else entirely. When you have typed the name, click anywhere in the green box to finish. Whatever you choose for the name, you will then need to set the value of this embedded data to be the ‘Travel Readiness’ score, by clicking the blue Set a Value Now text, choosing Insert piped text, ‘Scoring’, ‘Travel Readiness’ and then ‘Score’. Again, click in anywhere in the green box to set the text. It should look something like this:

Make sure you click Apply, and then head back to the Survey builder section.

You can now make use of this embedded data in the display logic. For example, go to the response meant for the people who scored between 0 and 2, and add display logic by choosing Embedded Data, ‘Travel Readiness’ (or whatever name you gave to the embedded data) and then Is Less Than and 3. To add the 3, click on Value and type 3 into the box. The options chosen should look like this (except with your title in place of the ‘Travel Readiness’ text):

Do the same thing for the remaining two questions - note that you will need to add two rows of display logic for the second question, indicating that the score needs to be both greater than 2 and less than 6 (or greater than or equal to 3, and less than or equal to 5). To add another line of display logic, click on the green + symbol to the right.

Preview the survey to check that the display logic works as you intended.

Email triggers

With email triggers you can have emails sent to yourself, to the survey participant (by asking for their email address and then using piped text) or to any other address, either every time a survey is completed or when a certain condition is met. Let’s add an email trigger to your Test Survey to send the participant their ‘Travel Readiness’ score (as calculated in ‘Scoring’ above) and/or any other relevant information.

To do this, first add a new question directly below the question(s) where you provided the participant with their score (this will either be in the ‘Travel Readiness’ or ‘Travel Readiness Results’ block, depending on whether you made use of display logic or not). This new question should ask the participant to enter their email address if they would like their results sent to them – you can add validation to it to ensure that an email address is entered, as detailed in the Editing questions section of the Survey builder page, if desired.

Now go to Survey options and to Post-Survey, then scroll down to Manage email triggers and select Edit triggers. At this point, you may want to start by specifying that the email trigger will only activate if the participant actually enters their email address. To do this, select Add a Condition then choose the question where they are asked for their email, select it again and then finally select Is Not Empty.

Next, note that the default To Email Address in the email trigger will probably be your own, but that you should update it to send to the participant’s email address instead. To do this, select the piped text icon (the A icon) in the Message section below. Choose Survey Question, then navigate to the question asking for the participant’s email, and then choose the question again. Cut and paste the piped text that appears into the To Email Address Field, deleting your own email if required. You can then add a From Name and Reply-To-Email as well as a Subject, and finally you can type the message you would like to send. Note that you can make use of piped text again when doing this – for example, you can include the participant’s score in the message in the same way as it was included in questions in ‘Scoring’ above (i.e. click on the ‘piped text’ icon and select ‘Scoring’, ‘Travel Readiness’ and ‘Score’). You can then choose to keep selected or deselect the Include Response Report box (and, if selected, the Show Full Question Text box), depending on whether you want the participant’s survey responses to be included in the email.

Finally, if you want to take the next step of customising the email trigger according to the participant’s score (or anything else), you need to add another condition which does this. For example, if you want the current message to only send to those who received a ‘Travel Readiness’ score between 0 and 2, click on the green circle with the plus sign to add another condition. Next change Question to Embedded Data, type the name of the embedded data (e.g. ‘Travel Readiness’, as created in ‘Scoring’) and specify Is Less Than and 3. You can then customise the message that is sent to these participants, in the same way as you customised the different questions in ‘Scoring’ above. Select Save Triggers to save the trigger, then select Edit Triggers again and choose to Add Another Trigger in order to repeat the process for different conditions.

Quotas

Quotas allow you to count how many participants have met a certain condition or conditions in your survey, and to control what happens when the quota is met. For example, if the survey quota has already been filled you could end the survey for the participant, you could hide a question or a block, or you could make use of branch logic, skip logic or display logic to customise what happens (for example, you could use display logic to hide a certain 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. Let’s use a quota to limit the number of people who take your Test Survey to 50. To do this go to Survey options and to Quotas, then select Add A Quota. At this point you have option of creating a Simple Logic Quota (where you specify how many participants are allowed to meet the set condition or conditions) or a Cross Logic Quota (where you specify what percentage of participants are allowed to meet the set condition or conditions). Choose Simple Logic Quota, then adjust the quota from 100 to 50 by changing the value in the box on the left, and rename the quota from New Quota to something more descriptive (for example, Response Limit).

Next you need to set a condition for when the quota will be incremented – this can be based on answers to survey questions, embedded data or other quotas. In this instance you want every survey participant to be counted as part of the quota, so keep Question selected and choose a question in your survey that everyone will see – for example the first question with the survey introduction. Click Select Choice and choose the question again, then keep Is Displayed selected. Finally, choose what you want to happen when the quota has been met. In this case the best choice is to Prevent All New Survey Sessions, and you can then choose to show a custom inactive survey message (you can create this in a similar way to an end of survey message, as described in the End of survey message section of the Survey builder page). You then also have the choice to Keep & record or Delete over quota options (which in this instance would only be relevant in the event that two people submitted their survey at exactly the same time).

To test that your quota works in the way you expect, you can increase the quota to the maximum value by selecting Set Count underneath the quota box on the left, ensuring that 50 is entered and selecting OK. Press Save and then preview your survey – you should see your inactive survey message displayed. Once you have checked it is working correctly, go back into Quotas and press Reset to set the count back to 0.

For details on all the different ways you can use quotas explore the Qualtrics support page on quotas.