I have asked support for help with this multiple times but have not received a response. 

I am conducting a survey that allows respondents to resume the survey at a later time. Several respondents have done so. As I understand it each time a respondent logs into the survey, their responses are saved for that particular login. I am able to merge these into a single row of data for that respondent in SPSS or whatever analysis tool I use, but was wondering whether there is a way to accomplish this in LimeSurvey. I am using the cloud version. 

The attached file shows a jpg of the responses from one individual. 

Thanks.

 

As I understand it each time a respondent logs into the survey, their responses are saved for that particular login

Yes and No.
It depends on your settings.

If you Enable participant-based response persistence: a repondent who interrupts a survey and logs in later will continue at the page he left.
[url] www.limesurvey.org/manual/Participant_se...response_persistence [/url]

Thanks, but my question was somewhat different. I was wondering whether there is a way, within LimeSurvey to combine a respondent’s sessions.

For example, he logs in, answers one question, then logs off. Then, he logs in at another time and answers the next question. As it stands, the data file shows each answer as a separate row. I was asking whether these can be merged within LimeSurvey, so that there is a just a single row for that respondent that contains answers to both questions.

I can do this in my data analysis software but thought perhaps there might be away for LimeSurvey to do this prior to exporting the data.

Eric

And my answer was exactly about this.

You only have to create a small sample, activate it with different settings and see what happens

Don't forget to allow this 
"Participant may save and resume later" in notification & data

As Joffm says, it depends on the settings.

If you do it right, the respondents just continue their previous response from where they left off ("participant-based response persistence" set to ON). If the "participant-based response persistence" is set to off, whenever they leave the survey before completing it, a seperate response (uncomplete) is created. And they always have to start over again.

So if you want that respondents can continue their response from before, this is what you have to set.

There is no way to "merge" the different responses in the other setting. And it actually doesn't make any sense either, because they have always started from scratch anyway.

If that is not what you are looking for, you should describe it differently, because from what you are describing, "participant-based response persistence" is what you are looking for.

A little example: Let's say you have 3 questions in your survey (question by question mode - in "all in one" mode this won't work anyway, only for question by question and group by group modes, as Limesurvey only saves answers to the DB if either the "next" or the "submit" button is clicked):

Respondent A starts the survey, answers question 1 and goes to next, but leaves before answering question 2. 

The next day respondent A comes back through the token link and wants to continue:

Scenario 1 - "participant-based response persistence" set to OFF: Respondent A has to start all over with question 1, his previous answer is stored in a line of the answer table and his new response will also be again stored in a seperate line.

Scenario 2 - "participant-based response persistence" set to ON: Limesurvey will pickup the previous answer, so respondent A would go straight to question 2. There will only be one line in the database.

Don't forget to allow this
"Participant may save and resume later" in notification & data

This is not necessary. This setting will show the "Save and resume later" button in the survey.

• Participant May Save and Resume Later: This setting allows a participant to save his/her responses and resume the survey at a later time. Please note that this is most useful with open surveys or surveys in which the participants are anonymous. If you are using  tokens  and the survey  is not anonymous , in most cases it is better to activate token-based response persistence from the  Participant settings  panel.

Source:  www.limesurvey.org/manual/Surveys_-_intr...on_&_data_management

But from what I see, he is using a token based survey and there you won't need this setting, just the "participant based response persistence" needs to be set to ON. If respondents click on their token link, they will be send to where they have left the last time.

Hi,
1. @holch, you are right about Participant May Save and Resume Later
Something went wrong in my brains.

2. But here the visible proof of Participant-based response persistence: ON

Survey with token "444" was stopped - Q1 is answered, Q2 is not.
 

Later it was continued -it's complete, Q2 is answered
 

Thanks, this was helpful. I can't imagine why anyone would want participant-based response persistence turned off, but that's another issue.

Is it correct that a partial response is downloadable if the respondent abandons the survey, that is to say he or she never returns?

I can't imagine why anyone would want participant-based response persistence turned off, but that's another issue.

Well, there are many different use cases out there and I am always surpised about what people do or want to do with Limesurvey and things that I would never use or do often are the standard for others, so you never know. I guess it is good to have both options.

I personally don't really see a use case (for me) without "participant based response persistence", but hey. Maybe someone who wants / needs their respondents to fill in the survey in one go and does not want to allow them to stop and continue.

Is it correct that a partial response is downloadable if the respondent abandons the survey, that is to say he or she never returns?

As soon as someone answers questions and has clicked at least 1 button (either a "next" button or "send" button) data is saved to the database and stored there.

You'll see the responses (partial and complete) in the response table, like Joffm has shown.

During the export process for responses, you can choose to download only completes, only partial responses or both, complete and partial responses. Just give it a try. Pretty straight forward.