Troubleshooting: Respondents not able to pick up where they left off | XM Community
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I’m running a study in which each respondent get a unique link to a long survey. In survey settings, I allowed respondents to finish later and record incomplete surveys after 3 months of inactivity. I’ve got respondents emailing me saying that they were not able to resume where they left off a few days before. The record on my end showed two separate entries under “responses in progress” tab for the respondent in question. Upon further questioning, they told me they did not close the old tab and start a new one or clear their internet history/cache or switch devices/ internet browsers. 

Any idea what causes this and how to avoid it from happening in the future? How do I get the respondent to pick up where they initially left off? 

When you send out the personal links how long did you set them to be valid for? It may be that those are trumping the survey parameters that you set

 

When you send out the personal links how long did you set them to be valid for? It may be that those are trumping the survey parameters that you set

 

 

Hi Kylie,

Thanks for the response. Actually, I didn’t use the personal link function in Qualtrics. I edited the anonymous link with embedded data field to generate a ‘personal link’ for each participant. (I created an embedded data field, set its value to each participants’ participant id in the link and email each link to the intended respondent. So that each respondent get an anonymous link with their participant id embedded in it). There weren’t any settings on expiration.    

@szhang,

I you are going to use an anonymous link, it would be best to use an Authenticator that automatically authenticates using the id in the link by matching the ExternalDataReference in a contact list. Set the Authenticator to “Reload any previously saved progress upon authentication”.

Otherwise, you are relying on browser cookies to resume - same device, same browser, not private/incognito mode, cookies not cleared.  What respondents tell you about these things isn’t always reliable.

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