Need Suggestions - How to Prevent Users from Submitting Survey | XM Community

Need Suggestions - How to Prevent Users from Submitting Survey

  • 4 January 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 116 views

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hello
I am looking for suggestions or ideas on how to address an issue. The issue is users who fill out the survey are submitting the survey (by clicking on the "Next" button on the last page) of they survey. I (the admin) then has to go in Qualtrics, find the survey and select "retake response".
In my process and how we are using the survey is that a user will fill out the survey, advised when they are done updating the survey (via email) and then an administrator (me) will review the survey, add some notes and then submit the survey by clicking on the next button.
It appears you cannot "lock" or password protect the "Next" button specifically. I have clear instructions in the survey with visuals that say DO NOT SUBMIT survey however people still do it. I have even changed the "Next" button on the last page to say "For Admin Only" however this still does not prevent users from submitting the survey.
Looking for other ideas on how to prevent users from submitting the surveys.


4 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +33

RyanBrickman Rather than locking them out of submitting the survey, I would set the survey to automatically send the retake link to you when they click submit. You could also set it up so that only you would see the block of questions that you need to complete.

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@MatthewM want to ask if you have any suggestions or ideas, this is the cause that leads me to have to use retake survey and resulting issue mentioned in the other post.

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@jmborzick this is not really ideal (automatic retake link) as the retake survey has issue that causes more problems.

Userlevel 7
Badge +30

https://community.qualtrics.com/XMcommunity/discussion/comment/53695#Comment_53695I don't know if I have a perfect solution, but here is something you could try that might reduce the likelihood of respondents submitting when you don't want them to.

  1. Create a fake last page of the survey on the next to last page.

  2. Change the button text on the next to last page or "Submit" or something else that would lead them to believe they had reached the end.

  3. Then, on the actual last page, if you have some kind of text or content that can take up a lot of space so that the real submit button is not immediately visible, put it here. I don't know if it's applicable to your project, but you might use a response summary here. (In some of my projects, I've run into the opposite problem: I include a response summary on the last page of my survey, and some respondents will neglect to click submit because they have to scroll down through the long summary, even though I include clear instructions that they need to do so.)

  4. (Optional, or maybe instead of steps 1-3) To make it impossible for respondents to submit, you could add a text question to the real final page, with custom validation where the required entry would be unknown to the respondent, but the reviewers would know it and enter it when they submit.

Hope this helps!

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