scoring 0 on a hidden default answer for weighted mean calculation - urgent

Question

Hi, I would like to know how to set a question to score 0 on a hidden default answer for weighted mean calculation. I am doing this to achieve the following:

The questions are single answer multiple choice questions. Each question has a timer. Whether participants select a wrong answer or fail to select an answer before the time runs out, they receive 0 score for the question (1 for the correct answer). Participants get to see a cumulative weighted mean score of their answers after each question (calculated in a math equation: $e{ round( gr://SC_7VyuEKO4vICLRI1/WeightedMean * 100 , 2) }%)

I heard that one way to achieve the above is to make a wrong answer as default answer so that when participants skip the question, a 0 score from the default wrong answer will be counted into the math equation. As a result, they will see a drop in their cumulative mean score right away.  However, any answer set as default will be highlighted in the survey to the participants (no way to disable this, surprisingly) and I do not want to highlight any answer to lead/mislead the participants. So I tried to add an extra, irrelevant choice to each question, set it as default answer with a 0 score and as only display when the very last question of the survey is displayed - basically it will never be displayed since all these questions will appear before the very last question of the survey. But this trick did not work. The weighted mean score after the question was not updated to incorporate the "0" from the hidden default answer.

It seems that if a choice does not display, it being the default answer gets invalidated?

Does anyone know how to possibly fix this or where I could find a solution? I have read the Qualtrics Support pages on Scoring, Math Operation, Formatting Answers etc but could not find any information to help my case. I need to start data collection using this survey from Monday, so any advice is appreciated.

Thanks a lot everyone!

LaurenK · Accepted Answer

Hi @CuriousZ! It looks like you reached out to our Support team regarding this inquiry! Our specialist helped troubleshoot your math operation not pulling in the correct scoring category, and walked you through removing extra spaces found in your HTML code!

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