Hello everyone,
I have a question about the "loop and merge" function and randomization.
In our study, we have several words that people have to rate on a bipolar matrix. We decided to use the "loop and merge" function, considering that qualtrics ignores page breaks when randomizing in the same block and that it is important that the words all appear on different pages, one after the other. It looks like this and the words appear randomly thanks to the loop and merge.
So far so good. My problem arises when I try to randomize the order of the scales and the order of the endpoints. I would like to have sometimes "bad-good, powerless-powerful, quiet-noisy", sometimes "quiet-noisy, bad-good, powerless-powerful" etc. etc. (i.e. randomize the order). And on top of that I would like to have sometimes "bad-powerless-quiet" on the left side of the scale, sometimes on the right side of the scale (i.e. randomize the endpoints).
Without the loop and merge function, I can randomize the order with the "statement randomization" function, but with the "loop and merge" it doesn't work anymore, all the words included in the loop and merge have the scales that appear in the same order. Moreover, I also want the scale point randomization. Contrary to the other (non-bipolar) matrices, I only have here the "statement randomization" option, the "scale point randomization" function does not appear anymore. So I can go to the advanced randomization options and reverse the scales, but in that case, I no longer have the randomization of the order ...
So, does anyone know how, in a bipolar scale using loop and merge, to randomize the order and direction of the scales for each word included in this loop and merge function?
Many thanks in advance!
Are you looking to randomize within the same respondent's experience? Or simply that some respondents experience the scales in the quiet-noisy configuration and some in the noisy-quiet configuration?
(We would never recommend that scales change for a single respondent because people don't read carefully, but you may have a reason that overrides that concern.)
If your need is for different respondents to "see" the scales differently, I think maybe I would consider two different Loop and Merge blocks, both with the statement randomization, but with the scales in different directions (remember to recode values to standardize the values regardless of order), and use a Randomizer to determine which Loop and Merge each respondent passes through. There would be a bit of work at the backend to re-consolidate so that's not necessarily optimal, but you could use a custom variable / Coalesce to return the response of each into a single value regardless of "which" Loop and Merge they went through.
Maybe someone here will have some ideas using JS also, but that is what I would tend to look into.
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