How To Create a Panel Survey

This document goes over the steps for using Logical Redirect and Quota With Redirect Plugins, as well as other features, to set up a survey that will be distributed by a third party panel company. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with question creation, survey Rules, and the following features:

• URL Import
• Piping
• Quota With Redirect Plugin (this is item #3 - click it or scroll down)
• Logical Redirect Plugin (this is item #4 - click it or scroll down)

Using these features, the survey will capture panelist ID information and store it in one or more hidden fields, determine respondent qualification, and send the respondent to the correct "landing page" at the panel company's web site.

Part 1: Set up the survey to capture panelist ID information

Insert a "Single line text with pre-format options" question with one or more tags to enable URL Import. It is recommended to place this at the beginning of the survey, and hide it. For this example, we will assume that the panel company we are working with has only one value for respondent identification - let's call it "id". So, set up the question with a URL Import tag, like this:

Part 2: Determine your Quotas and Terminate conditions

Surveys are launched through panel companies in order to gather a desired number of responses from people that fit certain demographics.

This example will keep it simple. Let's say that within the New England area, we are looking for 50 responses each from Males and Females in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

Knowing this, and having questions in the survey asking for Gender and State, we can determine our Qx.Ay references for Quota and Terminate conditions:

Part 3: Create your redirect URLs

Panel companies provide "landing page" or redirect URLs. While it is not done exactly the same way by every panel company, it is common for there to be three such pages: one for qualified completes, one for over quota respondents, and one for terminates (non-qualified respondents). Here are examples of what those URLs might look like:

http://www.somepanelcompany.com/complete.html?id=ABC123
http://www.somepanelcompany.com/overquota.html?id=ABC123
http://www.somepanelcompany.com/terminate.html?id=ABC123

You can see that these URLs have a parameter appended to them called "id", which the survey was set up to capture in Part 1. The value ABC123 is a placeholder indicating where in the URL the real ID will be inserted. That insertion will be done with Piping, so that the captured ID is passed back to the panel company. Assuming that "Panelist ID Information" is Q1 and knowing that it has only one answer field in it, we know that "id" is Q1.A1. So our redirects become:

http://www.somepanelcompany.com/complete.html?id={Q1.A1}
http://www.somepanelcompany.com/overquota.html?id={Q1.A1}
http://www.somepanelcompany.com/terminate.html?id={Q1.A1}

Part 4: Add your redirect URLs to the survey

Using what we determined in Parts 2 and 3, we can now add the needed Plugins to the survey so that respondents will be redirected to the appropriate landing page, based on quotas and their answers.

For over quota conditions, we will use the Quota With Redirect Plugin. There will be multiple instances of this Plugin - one for each quota. In our example, we have two quotas, so our two Quota With Redirect Plugins will be set up like so:

For terminate conditions, use a Logical Redirect Plugin. Some users with many terminate conditions prefer to use multiple Plugins - one for each condition or one for each question that has multiple terminate answers. This is also okay and purely a matter of preference. Our example is fairly simple, so we'll just use one:

Notice that each of the Plugins are set to redirect on "Next and Submit". Usually, you do not want a respondent who is over quota or does not qualify to take the whole survey before being sent to the appropriate landing page. By setting the Plugins to redirect on "Next and Submit", it can redirect the respondents upon the click of the very first Next button that appears after the quota or qualification question(s). This ensures that the respondent will be redirected from mid-survey as soon as it is determined that they are either over quota or do not qualify.

For the qualified respondents who will complete the survey, you can set up another Logical Redirect Plugin that uses some question in the survey as its condition (e.g., the last answerable question, which you might want to make "Must answer"). However this is not strictly necessary. Since over quota and terminate redirects happen mid-survey, any respondent who is actually able to make it to the end of the survey should be considered a qualified complete. So, you can simply insert that URL in the Redirect Page field at the bottom of the survey's Rules page:

Part 5: Provide the panel company with the survey URL

Visit your survey's Launch page, and copy the Master URL. If URL Import was set up correctly in Part 1, it will look something like this:

http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/313935/1bf4/?LQID=1&

If Part 1 was not done correctly, ?LQID=1& will be missing. URL Import does not work without this parameter, so be sure that your import question is set up correctly to have this parameter automatically added to your Master URL.

Paste this URL into a document or email that you will send to the panel company. Then add your parameter name from Part 1 to the end of the URL, with a placeholder after it to indicate where the value to capture should be inserted into the URL. If you have multiple parameters, be sure to use the ampersand (&) before each one. It will then look like this:

http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/313935/1bf4/?LQID=1&id=ABC123

When they distribute the survey URL, the panel company will replace the placeholder (ABC123 in this case) with a unique value for each respondent.

Part 6: Recommendations

Except for pre-launch testing, do not use the setting "Allow multiple responses" on the survey's Rules page, which always starts a new blank instance of the survey when a respondent opens the provided URL. This behavior prevents respondents from being able to continue their existing "in progress" responses if they should leave the survey and return to it later. The recommended setting is "Ignore response and do nothing", to make sure respondents who have completed the survey cannot get back in to change their answers.