Changing Completed Questionnaires

Usually, it is advisable, not to alter or change original data – the correction of details etc. is part of the data cleansing and should appropriately occur only there.

Although, there are cases, in which it could be necessary to carry out modifications in a data record (interview). For that, we have the function Collected Data → Changing Completed Questionnaire. This function leads directly to the desired page in the interview (albeit the interview is already completed)and allows to fill out the interview again from that point on. All so far saved answers remain registered, but can be altered.

Typical fields of application are:

• A participant accidentally finished the questionnaire but wants to make some changes in it.
• Due to an error, some participants were lead to a false page or question in the questionnaire, or the questionnaire was completed, although it should remain “open” – the participants shall be kindly asked to fill in the questionnaire from the right page.

Some information is deleted, when questionnaires are completed (the variable FINISHED gets value 1). This includes place holders, which were freed up in the questionnaire by means of replace() (or further) defined place holder, PHP-variables by means of registerVariable() and the order of items/options in questions with randomly rotated order.

• Plain and simple, arbitrary order can not be inspected/restored any more (except for when they specifically based on urn draws or similar and were saved als regular variables in the dataset).
• If place holders are used, let the interview re-open from the beginning or latest from the page in which the place holders are defined.

If questionnaires are modified belately, changes cannot be reversed. The “Original data” will be overwritten irrevocably. You can activate the complette documentation of changes in Research project → project settings → data protection → extended documentation to record such modifications.

Certain question types do not allow modifications of once entered answers. This includes amongst others Selection Sequence, which generally presents only not answered subquestions. Other testing procedures like Implicit association test (IAT) and Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) must be filled in completely again.

Who has access to the link can, if needs be, have a look into all so far entered information in the questionnaire. If the questionnaire contains sensitive details (e.g. personal data) and you send it via mail, do secure that no third has access to the mail. For this, an encoded delivery is suitable.

The function generates an individual URL (internet-adress) for each indicated questionnaire. Who owns the URL (the project manager or a participant who received it via mail), can change the completed questionnaire as if he/she had jumped to the indicated page via the back-button. The current answers are visible and can be altered.

Fill in here the casenumber (CASE) of the concerned questionnaire/s and the page you want to go to.

For link function you have three options:

• immediately go to stated site
  If you chose this option, the questionnaire will go to the site immediately after the confirmation. If the participant is still filling out the questionnaire, after the next click on “onwards” the stated site will appear.
• on retrieval go once only to stated site
  Here, the data sample won't be changed for the moment. The modification becomes active, when the quetsionnaires URL is retrieved. If the participant is to interrupt the questioning, the URL leads him/her later on to the site where the interruption occured.
• on retrieval go always to stated site
  With this setting, the URL leads the participant always to the stated site – albeit the questionnaire was repeatedly completed or interrupted on another site.

Furhtermore, you need to determine a period of validity for the generated URLs (links). This can be at maximum 31 days. After confirmation () an individual URL is created and shown for each indicated interview.

You can just click on the link to retrieve the site yourself. Use the right mouse button → “copy link-adress” (the wording depends on your browser), to copy the link to the clipboard and e.g. to send it to a participant.

There is a restriction if you want to access data from an associated address entry in the questionnaire using panelData(), mailResume(), mailSchedule() or mailRevoke(). This means that the questionnaire is no longer started via the personalized link from the e-mail, which would allow direct assignment to the address entry.

In order for the access to work nevertheless, the questionnaire must be in the appropriate access mode before (!) resetting the interview – i.e. usually before creating the link to change the questionnaire – e.g. “Serial mail” or “Login”. If the questionnaire is in the “public” access mode, the above commands will no longer work when changing the questionnaire.