Set Up An External Survey on LimeSurvey

We have installed an instance of the LimeSurvey survey system for creating and managing surveys. This free software is as powerful as many paid services and allows easy export to popular statistical analysis applications such as SPSS and R. Faculty, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Supervised Undergraduate with proper IRB approval may use our UCSC Lime Survey Tool. This section includes tutorials and policies for using this system.

Introduction

In the Psych Department's LimeSurvey website, linking a survey to our online pool website (Sona) is fairly striahtforward: You just set your survey to secretly call a special URL when the participant finishes their survey. That URL will connect briefly with Sona and give that participant credit for completing your study.

If you need an account on our LimeSurvey site, contact the pool administrator.

Please note: This guide assumes you have already followed the instructions in the Initial Study Setup section.

The last thing you'll get from those steps is a "Completion URL" like this:

https://ucsc.sona-systems.com/webstudy_credit.aspx?experiment_id=943&credit_token=66e315069f22450993651b60e3aaeaaf&survey_code=XXXX

Your URL will have a different experiment_id, and a different credit_token, but it should end with &survey_code=XXXX

To get started using Limesurvey, read over this in depth guide and tutorial created by the Computing and Communication Service at the University of Guelph. We've annotated it to be relevant for our Psych Limesurvey site.

Getting Started

1. Access the department's LimeSurvey website by going to psychresearch.ucsc.edu/limesurvey/admin.
2. Fill in your login info and press the LOGIN button.

Using the Surveys dropdown list, select the survey you want to setup for auto-crediting. The survey should currently be Inactive.

Setup a Survey Variable to Hold Participant ID

When Experimentlink sends participants to your survey, it will send a special code at the end (?c=XXXX) where XXXX will be replaced by some random number that identifies your participant. We'll need to store this number during the survey. The first step in setting up your survey for auto-credit is to create a variable to hold this information.

In the settings menu for your selected survey, open the Survey Properties dropdown and then choose General Settings.

Click on the Panel Integration tab.

Add a new URL parameter.

1. For the Parameter name, enter the letter 'id' as seen above.
2. Press Save.
note: Do not specify a Target (sub-)question!

Now that you have a URL parameter called 'id', press the Save button below the URL parameters interface to make it permanent.

Setting Up an Automatic URL Redirection After Survey Is Finished

After your participant completes the survey, Limesurvey needs to automatically send them to Sona so that they get credit. We need to turn on this feature.

You should already be in the general settings after the first step above, but if not: In the settings menu for your selected survey, open the Survey Properties dropdown and then choose General Settings.

Click the Presentation & Navigation tab.

1. Amongst the various options, you'll see one called Automatically load URL when survey complete? Set this to YES.
2. Press the Save button.

[Off-Topic: While you are here, please make sure that the settings called Participants May Print answers and Public Statistics are set to NO. If we notice these have been enabled, we will turn them off. If this occurs repeatedly, we may suspend your account. If you feel you have a justifiable need to enable one of these settings, contact us first.]

Specify End URL to Load After Survey

In this step, we need to actually indicate which URL we want to load after the survey ends, and also make sure that our participant identifier information gets sent along with it (luckily, we have it saved in a variable called 'c').

In the settings menu for your selected survey, open the Survey Properties dropdown and then choose Edit Text Elements.

At the end of the instructions here: Initial Study Setup, you should have written down or saved electronically a special auto-credit URL for your study. It should look something like this:

https://ucsc.sona-systems.com/webstudy_credit.aspx?experiment_id=943&credit_token=66e315069f22450993651b60e3aaeaaf&survey_code={PASSTHRU:id}

Note that within curly braces SONA has included the word "PASSTHRU" in all caps, a colon, and the word 'id'. This is so that it links up with the URL parameter we created of the same name. Edit the END URL for your survey:

1. Delete the default content of the field called End URL, and paste in your own completion URL that ends with &survey_code={PASSTHRU:id}.
2. Press Save. That's It! Be Careful!

Note that now, after you activate your study in Elink (but not before) any time this survey is completed (run all the way to the end and press SUBMIT), you will be redirected to the UCSC Experimentlink website and Experimentlink will attempt to credit your survey. Don't worry, it won't actually credit anything, it will just give you an error saying that the credit URL was invalid. Why is this? Because the link shown in LimeSurvey lacks the subject identifier (i.e., ?id=23432) at the end. However, when your participants click your survey link, Experimentlink will add this information and thus LimeSurvey will actually credit them when they press the SUBMIT button.You should get your survey completed and tested fully before activating your study. If you want to activate it but not communicate with Experimentlink, then disable the End URL feature.

Testing Your Survey

The best way to make sure that your limesurvey based study is properly being auto-credited is to:

1. Contact the pool admin at ucscresearchpool@gmail.com.
2. Go to faculty services and we will be able to test your automatic crediting in a few minutes.

Make sure automatic 48-hour crediting is turned off for your survey within Experimentlink, or participants will get credit 2 days after signing up for your study regardless of whether or not they complete it.

LimeSurvey Drill Down Guides

The following are a series of in-depth guide and tutorials for slightly more advanced LimeSurvey topics. As with the main Quick Start Guide, these drill down guides were created by the Computing and Communication Service at the University of Guelph. We've annotated it to be relevant for our Psych Limesurvey site.

How To Change The Order Of Questions In Your Survey.pdf
How To Configure Your Surveys Metadata.pdf
How To Copy An Existing Survey.pdf
How to Export Your LimeSurvey Survey Data Into Excel.pdf
How To Export Your LimeSurvey Survey Data into SPSS.pdf
How To Get Basic Statistics About Your Survey Response Data In LimeSurvey.pdf
How To Grant Rights To Your Survey To Another LimeSurvey User.pdf
How To Place Conditions On Questions to Govern Whether They Will Be Displayed.pdf
How To Work With Panels In LimeSurvey.pdf
Tips For Using LimeSurveys Internal Editor.pdf