Here's are two situations I find myself in and what I'd really like us to be able to handle (smoothly?).

Situation 1: Client is showing three TV ads in a particular market. In the survey, they want to ask the same series of questions about each. However, they want me to randomize the order of presenting questions about the ads.

In the past, I could use the randomize_groups workaround that was on the documentation site.

Situation 2: Client has three types of product. Each one comes in one of three possible configurations. (Nine products in total.) They want me to show three products in a random order, featuring one product from each group of three.

In the past, I could use the randomize_groups workaround that was on the documentation site coupled with three random number generators with a range of values of 1-3 each and filter as follows:

Group1_rand()
Prod1 (show if RandomA = 1)
Prod2 (show if RandomA = 2)
Prod3 (show if RandomA = 3)
Group2_rand()
Prod4 (show if RandomB = 1)
Prod5 (show if RandomB = 2)
Prod6 (show if RandomB = 3)
Group3_rand()
Prod7 (show if RandomC = 1)
Prod8 (show if RandomC = 2)
Prod9 (show if RandomC = 3)

With this approach, I could show one product from each group and present the groups in random order.

I need a way to get to this as soon as possible because my clients are waiting right now for me to get this figured out and to launch their surveys...tomorrow. (Possible???)

Thanks so much!!!

(P.S. If developers need to see the code, I'd be happy to share.)

Yes, there would be 4 different types of randomization one day:

1. Randomization of items/subquestions
--> This is already available for quite a while, but it would be good to be able to exclude more than one item from the randomization, e.g. other, none, all of the above, etc.

2. Randomization of questions
I think the new feature will cover this quite good.

3. Randomization of question groups
This would be the next step when in comes to the implementation of randomization in Limesurvey. It often happens, that you have to ask the same set of questions for different products, brands, situations, etc. However, you don't want to ask the questions groups in different order, in order to avoid a bias towards the first or the last brand mentioned, for example. This is a quite common necessity in market research.

And then there would be the fourth aspect, which I'd call randomization of subgroups of items/subquestions.

So you have a long list of items, which are grouped into different item groups. it would be good to be able to randomize the item groups (with the header being always on top, of course) and within the subgroups. But I think this will require quite advanced programming.

However, I think randomizing questions is already a good step ahead, next thing should be randomization of question groups. Number for would be great, but is more a nice to have for the moment.

@JoyLaneResearch: I didn't really get situation 1. Do they want you to randomize the groups of questions (but order of questions within the groups is the same) or do they want to present several groups that contain the same questions in a specific order but randomize the questions within the group? I assume the first one, right?

Because the second one would be possible with this approach from the svn. It isn't stable though.

holch wrote:

Because the second one would be possible with this approach from the svn. It isn't stable though.

I interpret

ask the same series of questions about each

as one question per Group. Not all three questions on one page.

Randomization of questions in one group
Randomization of questions in different groups

Or a pagebreak question type is put into a group to get randomization across different pages.

I don't know if LS2 sticks to the questionbyquestion / group/ allonone page concept. How would randomize question in "question by question mode" work? Virtual group names in the question attributes to connect these questions?

@holch: Situation 1 is randomize groups (pages) only.

None of my clients have requested randomizing question order within question groups (so far).

My opinion:

Randomizing the order of question groups (pages) is more urgently needed.

If we can randomize pages but not questions, I can, if necessary place one question on each page to force random question order.

However, if we can randomize questions but not pages, I don't see how I can fake a random page order.

Not sure I said that very clearly. Did it make sense?

jelo wrote:

The implementation looks a bit strange. I just copy the name of the group into the field of the question to make the group randomizing.

How is it strange? It is most flexible and very easy to configure. Just edit the questions you want to be in the same rand group and enter the same freely choosable name in each question for the new randomization attribute.

The advantage is that the so randomized questions can span across different question groups (in fact the implementation is not related to question groups at all).

So for example you can pick question 1a from question group a, question 5b from question group B and question 3c from question group c, just put them into your randgroup1 and these three question will be shown in randomized oredr, but at their destined places in the survey.

@JoyLaneResearch: That is what I thought and this seems not to exist yet. The function that Mazi was referring to is basically the possibility to define a certain "group" of questions (not to be mistaken by the already available question groups). The questions in the defined group of questions can be randomized. This is already a nice thing to have, but then, as you said, randomizing question groups is a more common scenario in market research. Let's hope this will come for one of the next releases.

c_schmitz wrote:

jelo wrote:

The implementation looks a bit strange. I just copy the name of the group into the field of the question to make the group randomizing.

How is it strange? It is most flexible and very easy to configure. Just edit the questions you want to be in the same rand group and enter the same freely choosable name in each question for the new randomization attribute.

The advantage is that the so randomized questions can span across different question groups (in fact the implementation is not related to question groups at all).

So for example you can pick question 1a from question group a, question 5b from question group B and question 3c from question group c, just put them into your randgroup1 and these three question will be shown in randomized oredr, but at their destined places in the survey.

I agree with Carsten. This question randomization is quite simple, but flexible. First I thought it was strange too, because the example questionnaire was a little confusing. I didn't really get what it did. Honestly, at the moment I don't see many situations or research designs, would require this level of flexibility in randomizing questions the way it is shown in the sample questionnaire. But as long as you can define some questions that can be randomized, I am already happy.

I also agree that the randomization of question groups would be the more important one, as there are several survey designs that might require this. But I assume that it is more complicated to randomize question groups, than to randomize questions, otherwise they would probably have implemented it first.

And: while I currently can't really think of survey designs that would require the scenario that Carsten was describing, I can imagine that there are survey designs out there, that need this kind of randomization, I just didn't come across them, but others might need this quite a lot.

c_schmitz wrote:

The advantage is that the so randomized questions can span across different question groups (in fact the implementation is not related to question groups at all).

So I got the wrong impression from the example survey. I overlooked
the different group name and didn't realized the different wording "Randomization Group Name"

That way it is a fine idea. I am sorry that I didn't catch that.

Is there a way to get a overview of the defined randomization groups.

Perhaps a feature request to get a overview of conditions,mandatory,randomization etc. I use the print version to check these things.

holch wrote:
I also agree that the randomization of question groups would be the more important one, as there are several survey designs that might require this. But I assume that it is more complicated to randomize question groups, than to randomize questions, otherwise they would probably have implemented it first.[/quote]

Perhaps the concept of these randomization groups (which are a collection of questions as I learned) can be done more common. Tagging questions with different collection names and apply certain functions like randomization to these collections. Collections of Collections. Not sure if the current data structure can be used to allow such collections at ease.

The current randomization feature seems to be useful and not that seldom.
I still see matrix questions about a range of products. And matrix questions in a row are bad as hell the randomization prevents that the results cause too much damage

> And matrix questions in a row are bad as hell
> the randomization prevents that the results cause too much damage

Well, this is more of a even distribution of bad results, isn't it. While it is something you might want to do if there is no other way, I highly recommend all researchers to generally improve the way they ask people, because what is the point of asking questions, where you already know that the results will be bad anyway? I know, some clients really insist, but...

holch wrote: Due to quite frequent requests in the forum, I would like to see the possibility to randomize questions, question groups and if possible answer groups (which do not exist yet, but see www.limesurvey.org/en/support/forums/20-...option-group-headers ).

It should be possible to define a group of questions, and those question should be possible to randomize.

Example:

Q1
Q2
Q3a
Q3b
Q3c
Q4
Q5

So the different Q3 questions should be randomized, while the order of the rest stays the same:

Q1, Q2 -start randomize- Q3b/Q3a/Q3c -stop randomize- Q4

The same thing should be possible with groups of questions, example:

Q1
Q2a,b,c
Q3a,b,c
Q4a,b,c
Q5

So this could look like this:
Q1 -start randomize- Q4a,b,c - Q3a,b,c - Q2a,b,c -stop randomize- Q5.

Ideally the questions within the group should be possible to randomize as well (see above).

Just wondering - how much of this has now been implemented in LimeSurvey 2.00+?

1. I see on the "Edit Group" page there is now an option, "Randomization group". Does this mean that groups can now be shuffled?
2. I see on the "Edit Question" page there is now an option: 'Get order from previous question.' This is a great feature. Is there any way to implement that at the GROUP level? So that if Group 1 was randomized in X order, Group 2 can also inherit this order?

spacejanitor wrote: Just wondering - how much of this has now been implemented in LimeSurvey

We have outlined all Limesurvey randomization options at How to randomize items at Limesurvey .

There are also some sample survey we created for demonstrating the various randomization options. Here are some links:

• Randomizing the order of answers/items
• Randomly redirect or show 1 of X questions
• Randomly show questions on page
• Randomly redirect or show 1 of X questions
• And a master called Limesurvey randomization sample survey

Please note that Mazi's links are referring to LS 3.x, not LS 2.0. You should not be using LS 2.0 at this point of time. It is not supported anymore and there have been a couple of versions in between already. You should really update to a recent version of Limesurvey.