Scripting Solutions
Additional scripting solutions will be added in the future. Please reach out to Alchemer with comments and suggestions on solutions you'd like to see via the link here.
Goal
Show a random set of pages (or page groups or questions).
Solution
There are several solutions depending on the options needed.
| Randomizing Solution | # shown | Limit to earlier checkbox selection | Balance method | Balance by a condition (like gender) | Effort |
| Show ONE Page or Question | 1 | No | Random | No | ✔ ✔ ✔ |
| Show X Pages or Questions | 1+ | No | Random | No | ✔ ✔ ✔ |
| Limit to earlier checkbox selections | 1+ | Yes | Random | No | ✔ ✔ ✔ |
| Least Fill (query) | 1+ | Yes | Lua Query | No | ✔ ✔ ✔ |
How to choose a solution
- # shown: Is it necessary to show one page (or question) or a set of pages (or questions)?
- Limit to earlier checkbox selection: Is it necessary to limit the pages (or questions) based on selections from an earlier checkbox question (Ex. Concepts or Brands)?
- Balance method: Do you want to choose randomly or use a Least Fill strategy to ensure pages (or questions) are presented as evenly as possible? This becomes more important when limiting the pages (or questions) shown based on an earlier checkbox question, for example:
You are researching shoe brands and have a checkbox asking about brand awareness. Everyone will select Nike but you also present lesser-known brands like Novesta and Aprix. With truly random selection many more people will get follow up questions about Nike because it's always part of the group of brands a respondent is aware of. By using one of the Least Fill strategies, if Nike and Novesta are chosen the script will check how many times follow up questions have been asked for Nike and Novesta and choose the brand with fewer responses (ie. "Least Fill").
The Lua solution is simpler to setup but does requires a license level with access to Lua script. In addition, its best when working with less than 10 checkbox options and collecting under 1,000 responses. While not hard limits, the solution performs a series of queries which take longer the more checkbox options and responses gathered, which can become noticeable to respondents as more responses are gathered.
- Balance by a condition (like gender): Extends the Least Fill strategy to balance based on a respondent condition, i.e. gender.
