Creating a Survey Activity

Researchers have the ability to add external surveys as activities for participants to participate in.

1:  Adding a New Activity

To create a survey activity, you will first need to add a new activity. To add a new activity, select Activity Builder>Activities & Scheduling from the navigation menu. Then, open the New Activity drop-down menu near the top right and select either Activity or Mobile.

The New Activity window will appear, where you can specify the following details for your survey activity:

• Name: The name for your activity. This name will appear for the survey in your activity log.

• Type: The type of survey you will use for your activity. Can be set to "Mobile" to allow participants to access the survey from the mobile app.

  The "Mobile" activity type is limited to surveys with 20 or less questions.

• Kind:The kind of survey you will use for your activity. Can be set to "One-Time Activity" for a survey that will only be taken once by each participant, or "Recurring Activity" for a survey that will be taken multiple times by each participant.

• Sharing:The level of access you will use for your activity. Can be set to one of the following:

  • Influenced: Allows everyone to see the activity

  • Uninfluenced: Allows the user to see the activity.

  • Private: Allows only the researcher to see the activity.

• Overdue Notice after:  The amount of time between the initial activity notification and the overdue notice.

2:  Configuring the Activity

Once you have created your activity, you will need to configure its settings. Click and drag the "Survey Link" stimuli from the Stimuli menu and drop it into the activity editor.

Note:  The Survey stimuli is only available for "Activity" and "Mobile" activities.

2.1:  Adding a Forsta Surveys Survey Link

Once you have configured the activity settings, you must add the survey link. To add a Forsta Surveys survey link, first navigate to the survey's Project Overview page within Forsta Surveys. Then select Test Survey under "Preview" in the Forsta Surveys navigation menu.

On the Survey Test Environment page, click Copy to Clipboard under the survey link to copy the test link as is.

Note:  If you are attempting to manually copy the survey link, be sure to exclude any special variables from the link. Forsta Plus Digital Diaries will automatically pass the necessary variables through to Forsta Surveys.

Return to your Forsta Plus Digital Diaries project. Paste your survey link into the "Survey Link" stimuli box in the New Activity window and add any instructional text you would like to include. You can also change the text that is displayed for the link.

Once you are satisfied with your link and instructions, click "Save" or "Save & Close" to apply your activity settings and link your survey.

Additionally, you can select PREVIEW to view your activity as configured.

Select DONE to return to the Activities & Scheduling page.

3:  Syncing Participant Data

No data from external surveys is stored within Forsta Plus Digital Diaries. You should always include a unique identifier variable for participants so that you can tie your survey activity data back to your project participants.

Now that you have set up your activity to send your participants to a Forsta Surveys survey, you need to make sure that those participants and their information are captured properly on the Forsta Surveys side. This will later allow you to link their data from Forsta Plus Digital Diaries to Forsta Surveys.

3.1:  Capturing the Participant ID

When sending participants to Forsta Surveys for a one-time survey, the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries app will append a unique identifier to each participant’s survey link, called a uid. In order to capture this unique identifier on the Forsta Surveys side, you need to modify your Forsta Surveys survey’s Participant Source element via the Survey Editor. 

First, select the sample source you would like to edit from the question tree. Then, select the + Variable button in the staging area.

A pop-up screen will appear where you can input the name, type, and authentication method for your new variable. For participants coming into Forsta Plus Digital Diaries, set the Variable Name to "uid", the Requirement to "Unique", and leave the Authentication field as the default "No Authentication". Once you are done creating the variable, click "save" to apply it and close the pop-up.

3.2:  Capturing Additional Forsta Plus Digital Diaries Variables

In addition to each participant’s unique identifier, the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform passes two URL variables to Forsta Surveys:

• activity_id:   The unique identifier of the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries activity where the Forsta Surveys survey link was posted.
• posting_id:   An extra variable which keeps track of which instance of that activity sent the participant over.

The same activity posted to two different segments within Forsta Plus Digital Diaries will have different posting IDs for each segment the participant was a part of. Recurring activities will also have different posting IDs depending on which day the participant submits them.

Following the same steps outlined above, add these two URL variables to your sample source, setting both to Required and No Authentication.

For projects where participants will return to the same Forsta Surveys survey link multiple times, the variables above will need to be adjusted slightly. Set each of the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries required variables to "Optional".

In addition, for surveys where participants will return multiple times, the survey project settings will need to be adjusted. From the Survey Editor in Forsta Surveys, select Settings in the navigation bar near the top of the page. Then select Field Settings to access and adjust settings for the survey link.

Since the participant will need to complete the survey more than one time, you must change the participant verification setting to allow them back into the survey. Scroll down to the section called “Verify Unique Participants” and select “No Checking” from the drop-down.

For additional information about verifying participants in Forsta Surveys, see Field Settings.

4: Matching Forsta Plus Digital Diaries Participants to Their Survey Data

Once you have collected data for your Forsta Surveys survey activity, you can view participants' Forsta Plus Digital Diaries data alongside their survey data by importing your participants file to Forsta Surveys using the unique identifier and other variables you setup earlier.

4.1: Exporting the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries Participants File

First, you will need to export your participants file from Forsta Plus Digital Diaries. To do this, click Participants in the navigation menu to bring up the participants list. Then select Publish report in the drop-down menu at the top right.

This will generate a CSV export which you can export from Reports tab of the Findings page.

4.2: Preparing the File for Import

Once you have downloaded your participant report, you will need to open it and make some slight modifications before uploading to Forsta Surveys. First, review the column headers of your file and remove any spaces in their names.

After you have removed all spaces from your column headers, use Excel's "Save As" option to re-save your file in.xls format.

4.3: Importing the File to Forsta Surveys

To import your participants file to Forsta Surveys, navigate to the View/Edit Responses report from the Project Overview page.

Then, click "Import Data" at the top right.

The Data Importer will appear, which allows you to configure the way the import is performed. Follow the steps below to match your participants' Forsta Plus Digital Diaries data to their survey data and perform the import.

1. Key Variable:  Select UUID as your key variable to match Forsta Surveys records to participants' Forsta Plus Digital Diaries information. 

2. Imported Variable:  Check which of the available URL variables you want to import from Forsta Plus Digital Diaries.

3. Project Variable:  Select uidto import participants' unique identifiers into the captured uid column in Forsta Surveys.

4. Question Type:  Set the types of questions that will hold the imported variables.

Once you are satisfied with your changes, click the "Import Data" button at the top right. When the import finishes, the imported variables will be available for their matching records within all Forsta Surveys reporting tools.