Hello,

I'm considering LimeSurvey for an in-person survey where a staff member assists ~100 participants to fill out the survey in person. I know typically LimeSurvey works via email invite (i.e., not in person), but I like all its other features for my survey purpose.


Is there a way to send out one participant invite (to staff member email), which could then be opened and filled for ~100 unique surveys as participants are recruited, such that all responses are recorded (not erasing prior responses)?

Or would ~100 participant invites have to be generated and sent (to the same email), such that each in-person participant is responding to a unique invite?



Thanks so much!

Why do you need an invite? Just make it open. The person would be the only one entering if understand correctly, right?

Thank you for your reply. I'm quite new to LimeSurvey and I suppose I misunderstood the open access survey. If it was in open-access mode, then only those who are given the URL can access and respond to it? In this case, they could open the link as many times as necessary for each new participant? I just need to make sure that it isn't publicly available to anyone.

Thanks so much!

ebiggar wrote: If it was in open-access mode, then only those who are given the URL can access and respond to it? In this case, they could open the link as many times as necessary for each new participant?

Correct.

ebiggar wrote: I just need to make sure that it isn't publicly available to anyone.

What is your definition of public. You cannot open an website without knowing the URL. Even if the access to the URL is unrestricted. You might define public as listed in search engines. But a URL with is not listed and has no restriction is still public.

You might try to restrict access via a question with a certain code as answer or use tokens to restrict access.

You could also try htaccess password.

You can either assign multiple "Uses left" to a token or enable "Allow multiple responses or update responses with one token".

- www.limesurvey.org/manual/Survey_participants#Add_participant
- www.limesurvey.org/manual/Participant_se...onses_with_one_token

This is totally possible and is done regularily. As already mentioned, you have a couple of options:

1. A non closed survey. Everyone who has the link, can fill in the form. If you do not list the link publicly on the Limesurvey index page (I think by default it is not listed), I don't see much danger of anyone guessing your link and fill it in. But, if you really want to avoid 110% that someone unauthorized guesses the survey link and answers, this is not for you (I guess your chances are better to win the lottery than for this to happen).
2. You use tokens. I personally prefer to use one token per respondent in my projects, because it allows to control things a little bit better and if the survey is interrupted, the respondent can just pick up where they stopped. If you just use one token and run various surveys at the same time, there is no way to pick up where you stopped.
But if you don't need that, you can go for one token that allows multiple answers, just as described above.

Thank you very much everyone for your thoughtful responses. I understand the public/token system much better now. I think sharing the URL for a public survey would suit my purposes fine as the staff member assigns and enters a predetermined ID# into the survey.

... as the staff member assigns and enters a predetermined ID# into the survey.

Or you could use tokens and use the predetermined ID# as token and upload them to the system. So to enter the survey your staff member would have to insert the predetermined ID# into the survey to be able to access.

Interesting! Would the token ID# be recorded and downloaded with the rest of the data (i.e. into an excel sheet)? It will be needed for linkage with other separately collected data.

Hi,
these are the questions which make me ask: "Did you try?"

If you had tried you would have seen in "Export results"


Of course, not in anonymous surveys.

Joffm