Welcome to the LimeSurvey Community Forum

Ask the community, share ideas, and connect with other LimeSurvey users!

Pause data collection without ending/expiring a survey

  • 3278142
  • 3278142's Avatar Topic Author
  • Offline
  • New Member
  • New Member
More
2 years 6 months ago #220925 by 3278142
Hello.  One very practical feature I loved on the Qualtrics platform was the ability to "pause" a survey, allowing you to make changes in the survey not related to structure or logic, e.g. fix a typo. You could then un-pause and resume collection.  I do remember that there was a warning dialogue that you could invalidate your responses so I know all the risks, but I was just wondering if you can do the same with LS. Right now I am only seeing a solution that involves duplication of the survey and once we have published a link that would break.  My guess is that I am missing something completely obvious.  Thanks, CK
The topic has been locked.
  • Joffm
  • Joffm's Avatar
  • Offline
  • LimeSurvey Community Team
  • LimeSurvey Community Team
More
2 years 6 months ago #220926 by Joffm
You can change anything that does not affect the structure of the database in an activated survey, like
change text of questions, subquestions, answer options
change equations in questions of this type (though this is nothing else than changing the question text)
change relevance equations,
change settings of questions

You can not
change the question type,
move questions to a different question group
add or delete questions,
...

If your changes take some time (more than a typo) you may deactivate it with the "expiry"option, After your changes just remove the expiry date.
So respondents who start the survey while you are changing the text of a few questions won't see the changed text of the first question but still the "old" text of the second.

Best you try it yourself.

Joffm

A bit more in the manual:
[url] manual.limesurvey.org/Changing_an_active_survey [/url]

Volunteers are not paid.
Not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless
The following user(s) said Thank You: 3278142
The topic has been locked.
More
2 years 6 months ago #220927 by Payek
Hi, I'm not professional, but many times fix typos etc. without stopping / pausing survey. From my experience you can change all texts (question text, answer options labels) except linked to database structure or survey logic (you cannot change question type, number of answer options, add question etc).
Payek
The following user(s) said Thank You: 3278142
The topic has been locked.
  • 3278142
  • 3278142's Avatar Topic Author
  • Offline
  • New Member
  • New Member
More
2 years 6 months ago #220928 by 3278142
Thanks for the pointer and explanation. That's exactly what I needed to know. ck
The topic has been locked.

Lime-years ahead

Online-surveys for every purse and purpose