There are two ways of doing this.

Option 1. By appending the survey web address

This is best used if you have a single individual you want to send to. How to do this.

a) Get the ID number of the question you want to pre-populate.
You can find this by going to the question and editing it. Look in the URL and you will see the question ID. In the example below the question ID is 149739

b) Change the survey URL and append the question ID and response
Your survey URL will be something like this. www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/MYSURVEYID where MYSURVEYID is the ID of your survey. Change this to the following:
www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/start.php?id=MYSURVEYID
Check that works! If it looks ok,  append the URL with the following
‘&qid149739=My Response’
Where 149739 is THE ID NUMBER OF YOUR QUESTION.

The finished URL should look like this:
https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/start.php?id=3271&qid149739=My Response

where id=3271 is your survey ID,  149739 is your question ID and ‘My Response’ is the text you wish to pre-populate the question.

Option 2 : Use the ‘Custom Data’ option in the Invitation Lists

Invitation lists let you send out emails to multiple participants at once by uploading a CSV containing their name and emails.

By populating the ‘Custom Data’ field you can pre-populate any question you wish with bespoke text for each participant.
The CSV file has the format:
Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Custom Data

The example below will pre-populate question ID 149739 with the text ‘AC345G’
johnsmith@soton.ac.uk, John, Smith, qid149739=AC345G

You can pre-populate many questions at once by adding a new question ID (qid) separated by ‘&’
e.g.  johnsmith@soton.ac.uk, John, Smith, qid149739=AC345G&qid149740=Male&qid149742=single

To do this go to Survey Settings >> Welcome Statement >> Do not show consent form

See screen shot below

If you wish to have a welcome statement but no tick box, the easiest thing to do is to have a first section with one question of the ‘stimulus only’ type.

The 'blank answer' alert option

Please note that due to ethical reasons you CANNOT force participants to answer all questions before progressing to the next page- all iSurvey can do is alert them to the fact that they have missed some, and if they wish they can attempt to complete them.

When creating a section presention block you have the following options.

Experiments conducted with a counterbalanced measures design “are one of the best ways to avoid the pitfalls of standard repeated measures designs, where the subjects are exposed to all of the treatments.”

3 condition counterbalanced experiment

Read more about counterbalancing at the excellent website http://www.experiment-resources.com/counterbalanced-measures-design.html

Please note : If you are using simple conditions (example shown below) then it is probably easier to use Section Presentation Blocks to create your conditions.

An example of a simple survey condition is shown below.

The ‘My Conditions’ tab allows you to expand on this idea considerably, and enables you to string a number of separate surveys together in a controlled, or random fashion.

An example of a more complex setup using entire Surveys is shown below:

In this example participants will take survey 1, then both surveys 2 and 3 but in a random order, then ONE of survey 4,5 or 6 and finally survey 7.

Option 1 : Create survey conditions

You can use Section Presentation Blocks to easily create different survey conditions. The example below will show ONE section from the block at random.

The section shown is completely random, and not incremented.
i.e. participants 1, 4 and 7 seeing Section A
participants 2, 5 and 8 seeing Section B
participants 3, 6 and 9 seeing section C

Option 2 : Randomise sections

This type of Section Presentation Block allows you to randomise sections within the block as shown below.

Other things to note:
– You can have as many sections within a Section Presentation Block as you wish.
– There is no limit to the number of Section Presentation Blocks in any survey
– You only see the option to create presentation blocks if you are viewing iSurvey in ‘Advanced’ mode (set from the Preferences page.
– Deleting a Section Presentation Block does not delete  sections within that block.

a) Randomise sections within a survey
b) Create different survey conditions

To create either option you will first need to make sure that your viewing mode is set to ‘Advanced’ in the User Preferences.

Underneath each section (apart from the very last one) a new link appears as shown:

After clicking this link you then pick the following:

1. The last section that will appear in this block
2. How the block will be displayed i.e. randomly present ALL sections in the block, or only display ONE section at random.

The example below shows a presentation block where ONE section is shown at random to each participant. This could be used for creating simple survey conditions.

Final things to note:

1. Section presentation blocks MUST contain at least two sections
2. You can remove presentation blocks at any time and sections/questions in the block will not be deleted.
3. You can move sections into and out of presentation blocks by using the usual drop down ordering method, but you CANNOT change the order of the first or last section in the block.
4. Section Presentation Blocks are NOT duplicated once a survey has been duplicated. You will need to re-create any after you have a duplicated any survey.

An example of a simple condition is shown below where participants are randomly assigned to take section A, B C. This would mean you have three conditions, Condition A, B and C.

There are two ways of creating survey conditions.

1. Use the ‘Section Presentation Blocks‘ (For simple conditions)

2. Use the ‘My Conditions‘ tool (For much large conditions involving multiple surveys)