How to store/use the responses from a previous survey as specific responses prepopulated in future

Yes! Here is how we have done this (or something similar to this). This scenario assumes that the respondent does not need to see that you have pre-answered a question for them - but records the answer in the dataset nonetheless.

1. in the first survey, set up a contact list trigger to update a contact list with the responses to those items.


2. In the second survey, set up display logic to skip the "prepopulated" item if the embedded data (from the previous survey, now written as an embedded data field in the contact list) is not missing. If the embedded data is missing, display the item and then write the answer to the embedded field in the survey flow (be sure to set up your survey flow with appropriate logic so that the response to the item only writes to the embedded field when the item is displayed/answered).


3. This results in a data set with prepopulated responses and new responses all stored as a single embedded data field in the survey 2 data set.

Thank you so much Cinda! This helps, we have an unique situation although where we would like to pre-populate a set of questions which are conditionally set up as a Loop and Merge type of question. In the contact list, we are unable to save the answers from the survey question's individual loop and merge loops like answer for loop1, loop2 etc, but have only the option to save the parent question of the loop and merge which is always empty.

Ah, looping undoubtedly makes it more complicated!
Your data set will have a response for each loop as a separate item response column, so it seems like you should be able to capture each response for each loop and update a contact list using a trigger, right? If you cannot do it directly from the question responses in the contact trigger (because sometimes Qualtrics is fussy that way), you could probably save each loop response as an embedded data field in the survey flow, then update the contact list using a contact trigger and those embedded data fields instead. Maybe?
Or, am I misunderstanding and you are trying to pre-populate text in the looped item itself? If that is the case, I would Un-loop the item and use display logic instead to display multiple similar items, that each bring in the appropriate passed-forward-embedded-data from the contact list. This gives you an uglier survey in the builder for you to look at and possibly a more complex survey flow, but the same survey experience for the user and, essentially, the same data set as using loops.
Good luck!