Programming the Survey in Qualtrics

After finalizing the instrument, the next step is to program the survey in Qualtrics. This section is brief because survey programming is to be documented elsewhere in the Handbook.

This step comes right after developing the survey instrument and is part of the first phase of the newsletter cycle, which usually begins during the last week of the month. During an ideal fielding week, the timeline is as follows (we will be covering the bolded portions in this section):

• Monday: Confirm topics and start developing survey instrument
• Tuesday: Finish survey instrument and begin programming
• Wednesday: Finish programming and launch data collection
• Thursday: Begin analysis of initial data
• Friday: Finish analysis script

Along with the usual good programming practices (e.g. using page breaks, forcing response, etc.), there are a few additional notes to keep in mind when programming a newsletter survey in Qualtrics:

• Copy the Trendlines Survey Template in Qualtrics.
• When you copy and rename the survey template, be sure to share the whole Gradient team on the new survey. Failing to do so can create issues with launching the survey and importing the data, which can only be done by Qualtrics accounts with access to the particular survey.
• Be particularly mindful of the programming instructions. Since the modules are often written by different people, it is possible that not everyone uses the same programming spec conventions. When in doubt, reach out.
• Be mindful of question length for multi-response questions. The usual script to read the newsletter survey data into R cuts off the question label after a certain number of characters. If multiple responses are allowed, the question label may get cut off before it displays the selected response options. If you have a long question for a multi response, or even if you aren’t quite sure if it will be too long, it is best to either 1) edit that question’s label to something shorter or 2) create the text of the question as a text/graphic type with no response options and put the response options into a second question with no page break (which will look to the respondent like one question with a set of response options).
• Try to make sure that everyone who wrote a module tests the programmed survey to both ensure that their module is programmed as they envisioned it and to get as many eyes on the survey as possible.