MKTG 344 (Sahni) Survey Guide

Share your survey

Now that your survey has been built, tested, edited, and perfected, the next step is to share your survey with the Behavioral Lab. Sharing the survey is called “collaborate” in Qualtrics. The Laboratory staff will be the people who launch your survey for you and ensure that the respondents get paid. It is necessary that you share the survey with them. Instructions below.

Launching The Qualtrics Survey With The Help Of The Behavioral Lab

1. When your survey is ready, click on the “Distributions” tab in the Qualtrics dashboard.
2. Click on the link to “Anonymous link,” and get a reusable link for the survey respondents
    
3. Paste that link into the shared MKTG 344 spreadsheet that is shared with you, so that the course support can circulate it for you. Make sure to fill in all fields in the Google doc so that the support can post it clearly.
4. Importantly, go back into the survey and click on "Tools" > "Collaborate." 
    
5. In the "username or email" box, type in the email address next to your group name on the course spreadsheet.
6. In the small blue box next to the username text box, click “Add”.
7. Check all boxes: “Details” under “View Reports”, “Activate/Deactivate”, “Copy” and “Distribute”
8. Next, click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page.
9. This video shows a similar way of collaborating your survey
   1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sWRXTX4od0

Cost of your survey & the number of participants

The platform the Behavioral Lab will use to run your survey - Prolific - charges 22 cents per minute of survey time per participant. (This price includes the platform service fee.) So, you will need to accurately assess the length of time it takes to complete your survey and include that information on the course spreadsheet. This will help you calculate roughly how many participants you are able to get given the budget you have to run your survey.

For example, if your survey is six minutes long, that is: 6 minutes x 23 cents = $1.38 per participant. If you have a $400 budget limit for this survey, you should expect to get: $400 / $1.32 = 289 participants. 

Be aware, however, your estimated length of your survey may not match what the lab determines the length of your survey to be. The lab staff will test the length of your survey prior to running a soft launch (see below). They may test it internally as shorter or longer than your estimate. There is no arguing with the lab support - they are the experts. They will post the soft launch of your survey for that estimated length. 

A soft launch is an initial launch to 30 participants. This is both to gauge whether or not your survey is running properly as well as a more accurate length of the survey. Once the soft launch is complete, the Prolific system calculates an average survey length taken by those 30 participants. This is the time that the lab staff will price out your final launch. Again, it may be more or less per participant than you expect, however there is no way around this. Just be aware that the length of your survey may change from what you expected, which means the number of participants you will eventually receive may also be different than what you initially expected.

Soft Launches

Your survey will first be launched to 20 participants only. This is called a "soft launch." The reason for the soft launch is to ensure that the survey works and the data are being received in the Qualtrics data spreadsheet as intended. You don't want to launch a broken survey to 100 or more participants only to wind up with bad data that you still have to pay for!

So, the Behavioral Lab team will run a soft launch of your study first. Once the data are in, the lab staff will email you that the study has been soft-launched. The data should come in fairly quickly - less than 8 hours. You should download your data spreadsheet from Qualtrics and ensure that the data looks as it should. 

• If your data look fine, you don't need to do anything. The lab will go ahead with the remainder of the launch after 24 hours.

What if there is something wrong with your data?

• You need to inform the lab support within 24 hours if your data are not what you expect!! If they do not hear from you within 24 hours, they will assume that your data are fine and proceed with the full launch.
• First, you should tell the Lab support that the data look wrong and to hold off on launching the full study until you give the go-ahead.
• Next, you should look over your data and your survey to see what went wrong. You need to fix the problem before your survey can move ahead.
• Once you have figured out the problem and fixed your survey, you then will email the Lab support and tell them that the study has been fixed.
• The lab will need to run another soft launch (at your expense) to ensure that it is working properly.
• After the second soft launch, you will need to check your data again and follow up with the lab support again letting them know if your data are looking ok.

After the soft launch, the staff will launch the study for the remainder of the participants.

Stay in communication with the Behavioral Lab staff

The Behavioral Lab will likely have questions for you while they are setting up the study and collecting data. Stay on top of your email and be responsive immediately! They are launching surveys for many people and the data collection needs to happen quickly. Any delay in providing answers to the lab staff may result in delays in data collection and you missing the deadline. Do not let that happen. Check your email regularly. Respond right away.

Finally

The Course Support in the Behavioral Lab must program a final question into the end of each of your surveys, so do not freak out that there is a final question in your survey that you did not put there. This is to track and pay the participants that complete your survey. The Course Support might also add some questions in the beginning of your survey depending on the type of restrictions you need for your survey.

FYI - End of survey Behavioral Lab prep

• You don’t have to DO anything here. These are an FYI to be on the lookout for how the Behavioral Lab will prep your survey prior to launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5vZpV6gueE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT2HGuxYK1Q