By Dipthi Battapadi, SCEA Member
SCEA hosted its second Coffee Break event on September 17, 2020 titled “Qualtrics Part 2” as a follow-up to our first Coffee Break. This Coffee Break was hosted on Zoom by SCEA Member Dipthi Battapadi (bio below) and included a 15-minute demonstration of key Qualtrics features, followed by Q&A and audience input. Key topics are listed below. Nineteen SCEA Members, including Board Members, joined in on the afternoon event.
The following is a summary of the Coffee Break, written by host Dipthi Battapadi:
I first began by asking participants to indicate their level of familiarity with Qualtrics:
I then shared tips on how to create a Qualtrics survey that offers a great user experience and eases issues for the survey creator.
Text Entry
- Create the text entry type and adjust the size based on the size of response you anticipate. Changes to the text box size will not be reflected in the backend, but will be visible in the final survey. You can check if changes have taken effect by clicking on “Preview”.
- Use validation techniques to limit types of response and help make data cleaning easier.
- The ”force response” option can be used for any questions that respondents have to answer. Respondents will not be able to move forward with the survey without answering this question. Another option is “Request response” which reminds respondents to answer the question using a pop-up, but allows them to proceed without answering.
Multiple Choice
- In survey design, note that radio buttons (circles) indicate single-choice or only-one choice questions, while checkboxes (squares) indicate multiple-choice or select-all-that-apply questions.
- Validation options for multiple-choice questions include limiting how many a respondent can check. This is helpful for multiple-choice questions where the survey taker can only select, for example, up to 3 options or at least 3 options.
Matrix table
- Matrix tables can be used for single-choice answers for each statement, or multiple-choice answers for each statement.
- Tip: Start with “Automatic Statements” provided by Qualtrics.
- For a long table, repeat headers so that respondents don’t have to scroll to see the options.
Some resources for Qualtrics use:
The July 2020 SCEA Coffee Break was presented by SCEA Member Dipthi Battapadi. Dipthi Battapadi is a Senior Researcher at San Diego State University’s Social Science Research Lab. She has over seven years of experience in program evaluation and survey research. Dipthi has administered several surveys at SDSU, for campus administration, SDSU library, bookstore, and other departments. She has worked on program evaluations for the California state government (CDCR, DHCS, JCC) as well as local government (Imperial County Sheriff’s Office), and nonprofits (YMCA, TKF, Legal Aid Society of San Diego).
Interested in hosting an SCEA Coffee Break? Contact us at scea.events@gmail.com.
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