Hello,

I need to create a question wherein the respondent can select and rank some items out of a list of items and also prioritize them. For example, if there are 12 flowers, s/he has to select top 5 flowers of his/her liking. Here, it is important to know which flower is choice No.1, and which is choice no.2 and so on.

But also, it is important for us that the respondent does not skip or accidentally miss out the question.

If a Ranking question is made mandatory, LS asks the respondent to rank all the items. Is there a way in which this can be prevented?

I looked at this thread [url=https://https://www.limesurvey.org/en/community-services/forums/can-i-do-this-with-limesurvey/96451-need-a-replacement-for-ranking-question][/url] and the solution by tpartner and this is closer to what we want. But here also, it breaks when the question is made mandatory.
So, can this be done?

Thanks for your time and help!

Not sure where the problem is. Just tried that. Using the ranking question, setting minimum answers to 5 and maximum answers to 5 as well, question is mandatory. I can't get through if I have more or less than 5 answers given (Limesurvey 2.06).

When i try that, I get a strange outcome. I can't choose more than 5 options. But the moment I stop at 5 and try to move ahead (by clicking on the next button), I get the message "One or more mandatory questions have not been answered. You cannot proceed until these have been completed"

And I also get an additional error message "One or more questions have not been answered in a valid manner. You cannot proceed until these answers are valid".

I want to be able to rank only 5 out of 12, not all 12.

As I said, it works fine here. Can't reproduce your problem.

What is your limesurvey version?
What is the template that you are using?
Can you upload the survey with the respective question here so we can check if it doesn't work on our installation?

Sure! I will do that. I am on 2.06.

Here's the link:
www.vixita.com/limesurvey/index.php/327347?lang=en

With the link, I can see that the problem exists (I believed you before), but I can't do much more (e.g. looking at the settings, etc.).

Is the workaround by tpartner applied?
If not, what are the advanced settings of the ranking question?

Which build on 2.06+ ?

If there are no settings which cause the validation problem to submit the survey, it might be a bug. There were some fixes in the last three weeks around ranking. This bug could be introduced with these fixed.

Please upload the ranking-question here.

If setting minimum and maximum answers, the question should be set to non-mandatory.

@jelo: The workaround by tpartner is applied, but it does not work when the question is made mandatory, same as with the ranking question.

@tpartner: My concern is that if I set it as non-mandatory, people may miss it or choose not to answer it, which is what we don't want.

Thanks!

Also, it is not a bug...the manual states that:

"Please note that if you use this attribute with Ranking questions please set the question to non-mandatory - because when you leave it at mandatory all items need to be ranked which is counter-active to this feature."

This is under 'Question Types - Ranking > Minimum Answers (min_answers)
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Question_type_-_Ranking

I am not sure how it is counter-active, but since this is open source, am hoping that there is some way of working around this.

So where is your problem? LS validates on Javascript and PHP level. When you set a minimum of five answers in the ranking question, you can set the question to non-mandatory and you're done.
And since you know it is no bug, we can put this case to rest.

Two problems, actually...

First problem: I still keep getting these messages, even if I make the question non-mandatory:

"One or more mandatory questions have not been answered. You cannot proceed until these have been completed"
"One or more questions have not been answered in a valid manner. You cannot proceed until these answers are valid".

Second Problem: At a larger level, the logic of that question type seems incorrect (to me at least). One should be able to choose some options out of many without making the question non-mandatory. Or else, we need a different question type which selects and ranks (in one operation)...