Snap Surveys

Home / Community / Worksheet 46

Setting up a Web survey to look different according to where people come from

You can use the same survey to collect data about different products or from different groups of people and tailor it accordingly.

This is done by using special links to connect to the same online survey. When a respondent clicks the link, it identifies the survey site, and sets up this information in a special variable in the survey. You can then use survey routing to make questions appear or disappear, create derived variables, and so on.

You can either create two sets of email invitations to separate panels, each set containing its own link, or you could have different links to the same survey for a "Take our survey" link for different sites.

For simplicity, this survey assumes that you are running a website satisfaction survey on three different sites, which represent three different branches of your organisation. The same survey will display a different title, depending how you arrived. The worksheet includes brief instructions on writing an HTML file to test that the links to the different versions of the survey work.

Background

Snap has a number of pieces of information which it records automatically, and which you can use in your survey. The pieces of information are similar to system variables which you may have seen in other software on your PC. They include information such as the date, the time a respondent started the survey and so on. They are known in Snap as paradata variables.

If you are running a survey on the Web you can load information into the system variables when a user clicks on a link to a survey. This is used when respondents are logged in automatically (See worksheet 34) One of the paradata variables available is called ID.site. You can load text into this field by defining a special link in a web page, or by putting it in your email invitations.

If you are hosting your survey in Snap Online WebHost you can change the text of the questions by inserting derived variables containing different question text which is selected according to the contents of the site variable. This option is not covered in this worksheet but will be covered next month.

Summary of steps

The survey used for the worksheet is very simple, consisting of a title and one question. The title is actually three titles, one for each of the three sites. You will create a new survey with routing based on the ID.site variable, and create a very simple HTML file which has links that put the value into the ID.site variable.

Step1: Setting up the questions

Provide an appropriate title for each version of the survey.

  1. Open Snap and click or select File|New to create a new survey.
  2. Specify the Publication Medium as Web for HTML.
  3. Change to the Questionnaire window if it is not already in that mode.
  4. A space for a title is created automatically in the survey. Type Title for Product website and press [Return].
  5. Change the style of the second line to Title (select Title from the drop-down list at the left of the questionnaire window ribbon). Enter Title for Development website and press [Return].
  6. Repeat for the third title, Title for Services website.
  7. Change the style of the fourth line to Multi-choice, and enter the text "When you were on the website, did you find it easy to use?"
  8. Press the [Tab] key and type "Yes".
  9. Press the [Tab] key again and type "No".

    Titles and question for Snap site variable survey

  10. Click to save the survey.

Step 2: Changing the look of the titles

You can insert graphics and colours into the different titles to make them even more distinct.

  1. Click anywhere in the first title.
  2. Select Background in the Toolbar topics. Select Text in the drop-down list of items that can have a background. Choose an appropriate colour or picture as the background for the Product title

    Title ready to change background

  3. Select Font in the Toolbar topic in the list. Adjust the font color and text. If you wish, use the [Insert] button to place an image in the title.
  4. Repeat for the other two titles, choosing a different look for each one.

Step 3: Adding the ID.site variable to your survey

The paradata variables are not automatically included in your survey. You must explicitly add the ones you want to use.

  1. Click on the questionnaire window toolbar to open the Questionnaire Properties dialog.
  2. Select Paradata in the list of options on the left.

    Paradat with site selected

  3. Select Site in the list of system variables and check the Use in survey box. Click [OK].

    The ID.site variable will be added at the top of your survey.

    ID.site variable at top of survey

Step 4: Setting up the routing to change which title appears

You must decide what the possible site variables are going to be. In this worksheet, 1 represents the Product site, 2 represents the Training site and 3 represents the Service site.

  1. Click anywhere in the first title to select it.
  2. Click on the Questionnaire Design toolbar to open the Routing Rules dialog.

  3. Click [Add] to create a new routing rule.

  4. Select Conditionally Ask Question from the Type box and click [OK].
  5. The Rule details dialog appears. The cursor will be in the If box. Type ID.site=1 in the If box. This means that this question (in this case a title) will only appear if the value in the ID.site variable is 1.

  6. Click [OK]. The routing rules box disappears, and a routing arrow is shown on the questionnaire by the first title. This tells you that there is routing associated with that question. The arrow does not appear on the published questionnaire.

    Title with routing arrow

  7. Create a routing rule in the same way for the second title, but this time type ID.site=2 in the If box.
  8. Repeat for the third title, but type ID.site=3 in the If box.

Step 5: Testing the routing in a preview

It is worth checking that the routing works in a preview when you hand-edit the data, before setting up the survey so that you cannot enter the site data by hand.

  1. Select File|Publish to open the Publish Questionnaire dialog.
  2. Select the Output Method to Preview Only.
  3. Click [Publish] to publish the survey. A preview of your survey will appear, showing the site variable in a page on its own.

    E

  4. Enter 2 in the ID.site variable and click [Next]. Check that the correct title appears.
  5. Click [Next] again and check that you go straight to the question, without the other titles being displayed.
  6. Click [Back] twice to return to the ID.site variable page. Repeat the test, entering first 1 and then 3 in the site variable.
  7. When you have finished your check, close the preview. If there were any problems, check the routing in the survey.

Step 6: Hiding the paradata variable

  1. Click anywhere in the ID.site variable to select it.

    Show All on questionnaire toolbar

  2. Select Show in the Topic Objects list and select All in the next list.
  3. Uncheck the Show box. The ID.site question disappears.

Step 7: Testing your survey

Because the site variable is hidden in the published survey, you need to use the special links to test that the finished survey works correctly

  1. Press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[W] or select File|Publish to open the Publish Questionnaire dialog.
  2. Set the Output Method to Publish without preview.
  3. Browse for the folder where you wish to store your survey files, and make a note of what the Path is.
  4. Click [Publish] to publish the survey.
  5. Open your browser and use the File|Open command to browse for your published file. Edit the link in the address bar of the browser by adding ?s=1 to the end of the survey link. Add file:// to the start of the link is this is not automatically inserted by your browser

    e.g., file://YourPath/YourFile.htm?s=1 (A full example is given below.)

  6. Check that the correct title page opens.
  7. Repeat for the other two title bars, changing the extra link text to ?s=2, and ?s=3.

Your survey is now ready to upload to a Web site. When you create new links to your survey on web pages or in emails, remember to change the link to the survey as appropriate.

For example <a http://www.MyWebSite.com/MySurvey.htm?s=1> Try our survey </a>.

Example link

Output property for site variable survey

The Publish dialog shown would use this file address

file:///C:/Worksheets/site_variable.htm?s=2

to load the ID.site variable with 2.

Showing use of ?s= in the link to a page