Asking the same questions about different referents across blocks - possible to merge responses? | XM Community
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Dear community,
We are running a survey that randomly assigns respondents to receive a vignette about one of five technologies, and then answer questions related to that technology. The questions are the same across technologies, it is just the referent that is different (e.g. I can rely on Technology A/B/C/D/E). Obviously, these are housed within five different blocks, and those blocks are presented randomly.
When I download test data into SPSS, each referent variable has a column (e.g. Trust_A, Trust_B, Trust_C, Trust_D, Trust_E), and there are gaps depending on which condition a respondent answered - so if they answered questions relating to A, all of the other variables related to B-E are empty. What I want to do is have all responses under a merged "Trust" variable, and use a separate condition variable to test for differences (apologies for not explaining this very well!). Is there a way to set this up in Qualtrics so everything is pretty much arranged as I want when it comes to downloading the data, or is it a case of manipulating the data in SPSS post download?
Many thanks in advance
Kind regards
Steve

SLockey why are these in 5 different blocks if the questions are the same? I think you can achieve this through one block and embedded data.
The general idea....
Survey Flow

  • Add a randomizer

  • Pick one of the 5 technologies

  • Set the value for this technology as you want it to insert in to your questions as an embedded data field

Survey Editor
  • Use one block that has the 5 vignettes and follow up questions

  • Use display logic to to show only the vignette of the technology chosen by the randomizer

  • Use piped text to insert the technology name into your follow up questions

Data Analysis
  • You then have the data in one column mixing together technologies

  • You can use the embedded data field to identify which technology was chosen and asked about

This should get your data file set up the way you want it. If you have more questions on the specifics please reach out and I can send you some screen shots.


If a person can only have answered one of these, then maybe what you want to do is go into the Data & Analysis tab, select Field Editor, and create a Combine field that Coalesces the value of all the values until it reaches one.
image.pngThat is how to technically do it, but I will just say that not all SPSS programs treat embedded and custom variables the same way. Ours insists they are all text, not variables, so... Your Mileage May Vary. But I wish you luck!


Thank you both for your responses. bstrahin , I think your response might be closest to what I'm looking for, but I should note that there are some slight variations in question and response text. We're asking about perceptions of artificial intelligence. One vignette asks about perceptions of AI in general, the others ask about specific applications. So slight differences are, for example:
I believe most applications of AI...

  1. Produce outcomes as good as or better than a human expert.

vs.
I believe specific application...
  1. Produces outcomes as good as or better than a human expert.

As you can see, the meaning is the same, but some grammatical alternations are necessary to make each question make sense. I imagine these differences could also be dealt with using piped text?
I'm also not quite sure how to set up the display logic. It seems like I would still need to set up separate questions to indicate which of the technologies has been displayed - e.g. display if embedded data - technology is equal to AI, would display the question related to AI, but wouldn't I need to set up 4 separate questions to display each of the others, which is ostensibly what I've done by having separate blocks and randomising them? I'm sure I'm missing something very obvious (and probably quite silly!) here, but I'd appreciate any further advice on specifics.
Thanks again for your help


SLockey attached is a QSF file to see how I recommend handling these slight differences. You are right that you can do it through piped text.
Sandbox.qsf


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