I am testing development of a survey template in which some demographic information must be captured without violating the anonimous characteristic of the survey. One of the demographic data could be the Area of Work of the respondent and this could correspond to different levels (i.e. Operations Manager; Finacial Manager; etc.) and each could have some sublevels, for example Operations Manager (i.e. Plant Manager; Inventoy Manager; Maintenance Manager), but at the same time Plant Manager could also have some sublevels (i.e. Production Planning; Quality Control; Order Processing; etc.).

Therefore, a survey could require many different levels and sublevels of demographic data and for each level and sublevel tokens to be generated according to the number of participants at each level and sublevel. A fake First_Name, Last_Name and Email can be predefined for each participant and tokens delivered without knowing who received the specific token and required anonimity assured.

Once a participant uses her/his token to respond to the survey, the demogarfic information corresponding to that token would be known for survey analysis.

As this is a template for a survey, which could be used for different companies with different structures, although using the same questions, I need assistance in how to structure such demographic info into the survey? and then how to generate enough token according to number of participants for each demographic level, without having to predefine each participant for a token?

I am presently experimenting using an alternative approach in generating tokens outside of LimeSurvey, but would better prefer to do so within LimeSurvey 2.53.

Can any one guide me through this in LimeSurvey or suggest a better approach?

mbolanosd wrote: As this is a template for a survey, which could be used for different companies with different structures, although using the same questions, I need assistance in how to structure such demographic info into the survey? and then how to generate enough token according to number of participants for each demographic level, without having to predefine each participant for a token?

You will have to decide if you want a token per person or per group.
Since you can reuse tokens, you might specify tokens per group. And allow people from the same demographic (e.g. group) to use the same token.

To get demographics into tokens, you can use "User-defined_attribute_fields":
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Survey_partici...ned_attribute_fields
You can use this data inside the survey to control the behavior of the survey (e.g. certain questions for question groups).

Thanks Jelo.

The group option does not eliminate the possibility for one person to reuse the token and duplicate her/his participation.

The user_defined_attribute_fields could possibly point me to a better solution than the one I was looking for, as long as I could import data from another survey that would automatically be used in token generation for the survey I am working on. For example, develop a survey that would define the demographic data required and have those answers imported to the participants token generation.

I would need to find out how this import should be done for it to work. Any ideas?

Does this seem as a more elegant approach to you?

mbolanosd wrote: The group option does not eliminate the possibility for one person to reuse the token and duplicate her/his participation.
I would need to find out how this import should be done for it to work. Any ideas?

I don't have a crystal ball. So I don't know the scope and the taxonomy of your project.

You wrote this:

and then how to generate enough token according to number of participants for each demographic level, without having to predefine each participant for a token?

I don't see how you want to provide a person token match, but at the same time don't want to predefine everything.

Define the attributes needed to describe every person/group. Create the attributes in LimeSurvey.
Create a few tokens. Export the CSV out of LimeSurvey.
Merge you external data (tokens, demographics etc.) in a Spreadsheet or a database or any other ETL tool which can import and export CSV. You than import the final participants list via CSV into LimeSurvey.

The issue is that before hand one does not know the specifics of the demographic data required by a particular company and I am searching for a solution to make that very straight forward and simple without having to predifine everything in LimeSurvey.

I understand that it will probably be difficult to generate tokens for individual participants and at the same time assure that the survey results will not identify any of the participants, but that is what I must try to accomplish while at the same time use the token for identifying some demografics of the respondent (not all).

If a demografic group has 25 potential participants, why would it be difficult to generate 25 different tokens for that group to be distributed amonst the group, and then when a participant uses the token in the survey to know that she/he belongs to that group without knowing who that person is. I know one can ask the demografics in survey questions and have each participant respond, but experience shows that one would get many wrong responses just because the participant doesn't want to be identified or because of many other reasons.

I see that Lime Survey is well conceived for public surveys and non-anonimous surveys. I also think that LimeSurvey can very well allow accomplishing what I am looking for, but I am not expert enough to do so as of now. I will find a solution and you have pointed out to some knowledge from which I can envision a solution.

Thanks much Jelo.