Millisecond Forums

Best way to link subjects in a longitudinal design

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic23235.aspx

By juliasmith - 1/16/2018

Hello all! I am a new Inquisit user, and I have a question about the best (i.e. most reliable) way to link subjects day-to-day in a longitudinal design. The survey design will be as follows: participants will complete n-back and OSPAN tasks on Inquisit 6 days in a row. Their journey through the study will be: Respondi (a company providing survey panels) --> Qualtrics --> Inquisit --> Qualtrics --> Respondi (so that they get their compensation for participating). I have seen on other forums that it is possible to download the <query string> showing the link that participants came from; we will be using the anonymous link with Qualtrics that captures their identifiers assigned by Respondi. As a rookie to this, I am wondering if someone has 1) done this before (or something similar) 2) if the <query string> information will indeed be that Qualtrics Anonymous Link or if it changes when it redirects to Inquisit, and 3) if anyone has additional insight into conducting longitudinal experiments with Inquisit. Thank you and have a great day!
By Dave - 1/17/2018

juliasmith - Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Hello all! I am a new Inquisit user, and I have a question about the best (i.e. most reliable) way to link subjects day-to-day in a longitudinal design. The survey design will be as follows: participants will complete n-back and OSPAN tasks on Inquisit 6 days in a row. Their journey through the study will be: Respondi (a company providing survey panels) --> Qualtrics --> Inquisit --> Qualtrics --> Respondi (so that they get their compensation for participating). I have seen on other forums that it is possible to download the <query string> showing the link that participants came from; we will be using the anonymous link with Qualtrics that captures their identifiers assigned by Respondi. As a rookie to this, I am wondering if someone has 1) done this before (or something similar) 2) if the <query string> information will indeed be that Qualtrics Anonymous Link or if it changes when it redirects to Inquisit, and 3) if anyone has additional insight into conducting longitudinal experiments with Inquisit. Thank you and have a great day!

Query strings / query parameters are indeed the best way to "link" and keep track of the data for a given participant across the three platforms.

- Respondi will assign some unique identifier to each participant. Respondi should forward this identifier to Qualtrics.

- Qualtrics can / should be configured to read this parameter, log it and use it as ID. Qualtrics should then forward this identifier to the Inquisit Web launch page for your study.
See https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/standard-elements/passing-information-through-query-strings/ , both the "Passing Information into a Survey" and "Passing Information from a Survey" sections are relevant in your case.

- Inquisit, too, can / should be configured to read the query parameter and use it as its subject ID, i.e. the identifier will be logged to its data files. Inquisit will automatically forward the query parameter to the 2nd Qualtrics survey, you merely need to provide the URL for said survey in the web experiment's settings (without the ID query parameter; Inquisit adds that automatically). See https://www.millisecond.com/support/docs/v5/html/howto/interopsurveys.htm

- The 2nd Qualtrics survey can again read and log the identifier, and finally forward that back to Respondi to indicate completion.
By juliasmith - 1/30/2018

Dave - Wednesday, January 17, 2018
juliasmith - Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Hello all! I am a new Inquisit user, and I have a question about the best (i.e. most reliable) way to link subjects day-to-day in a longitudinal design. The survey design will be as follows: participants will complete n-back and OSPAN tasks on Inquisit 6 days in a row. Their journey through the study will be: Respondi (a company providing survey panels) --> Qualtrics --> Inquisit --> Qualtrics --> Respondi (so that they get their compensation for participating). I have seen on other forums that it is possible to download the <query string> showing the link that participants came from; we will be using the anonymous link with Qualtrics that captures their identifiers assigned by Respondi. As a rookie to this, I am wondering if someone has 1) done this before (or something similar) 2) if the <query string> information will indeed be that Qualtrics Anonymous Link or if it changes when it redirects to Inquisit, and 3) if anyone has additional insight into conducting longitudinal experiments with Inquisit. Thank you and have a great day!

Query strings / query parameters are indeed the best way to "link" and keep track of the data for a given participant across the three platforms.

- Respondi will assign some unique identifier to each participant. Respondi should forward this identifier to Qualtrics.

- Qualtrics can / should be configured to read this parameter, log it and use it as ID. Qualtrics should then forward this identifier to the Inquisit Web launch page for your study.
See https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/standard-elements/passing-information-through-query-strings/ , both the "Passing Information into a Survey" and "Passing Information from a Survey" sections are relevant in your case.

- Inquisit, too, can / should be configured to read the query parameter and use it as its subject ID, i.e. the identifier will be logged to its data files. Inquisit will automatically forward the query parameter to the 2nd Qualtrics survey, you merely need to provide the URL for said survey in the web experiment's settings (without the ID query parameter; Inquisit adds that automatically). See https://www.millisecond.com/support/docs/v5/html/howto/interopsurveys.htm

- The 2nd Qualtrics survey can again read and log the identifier, and finally forward that back to Respondi to indicate completion.

Thanks so much for the information here! For the panel company (Respondi), there are two identifiers for each subject (one is the same every day, one changes each study); I can configure the URL in Qualtrics to read both, can Inquisit then read both two or can it only read one query parameter and pass one back to Qualtrics? Thanks again for your help! 
By Dave - 1/31/2018

juliasmith - Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Dave - Wednesday, January 17, 2018
juliasmith - Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Hello all! I am a new Inquisit user, and I have a question about the best (i.e. most reliable) way to link subjects day-to-day in a longitudinal design. The survey design will be as follows: participants will complete n-back and OSPAN tasks on Inquisit 6 days in a row. Their journey through the study will be: Respondi (a company providing survey panels) --> Qualtrics --> Inquisit --> Qualtrics --> Respondi (so that they get their compensation for participating). I have seen on other forums that it is possible to download the <query string> showing the link that participants came from; we will be using the anonymous link with Qualtrics that captures their identifiers assigned by Respondi. As a rookie to this, I am wondering if someone has 1) done this before (or something similar) 2) if the <query string> information will indeed be that Qualtrics Anonymous Link or if it changes when it redirects to Inquisit, and 3) if anyone has additional insight into conducting longitudinal experiments with Inquisit. Thank you and have a great day!

Query strings / query parameters are indeed the best way to "link" and keep track of the data for a given participant across the three platforms.

- Respondi will assign some unique identifier to each participant. Respondi should forward this identifier to Qualtrics.

- Qualtrics can / should be configured to read this parameter, log it and use it as ID. Qualtrics should then forward this identifier to the Inquisit Web launch page for your study.
See https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-flow/standard-elements/passing-information-through-query-strings/ , both the "Passing Information into a Survey" and "Passing Information from a Survey" sections are relevant in your case.

- Inquisit, too, can / should be configured to read the query parameter and use it as its subject ID, i.e. the identifier will be logged to its data files. Inquisit will automatically forward the query parameter to the 2nd Qualtrics survey, you merely need to provide the URL for said survey in the web experiment's settings (without the ID query parameter; Inquisit adds that automatically). See https://www.millisecond.com/support/docs/v5/html/howto/interopsurveys.htm

- The 2nd Qualtrics survey can again read and log the identifier, and finally forward that back to Respondi to indicate completion.

Thanks so much for the information here! For the panel company (Respondi), there are two identifiers for each subject (one is the same every day, one changes each study); I can configure the URL in Qualtrics to read both, can Inquisit then read both two or can it only read one query parameter and pass one back to Qualtrics? Thanks again for your help! 

(1) The launch page will automatically capture all incoming query parameters, all query parameters will be preserved and automatically appended to any outgoing URL.
(2) The _script_ however can only make use of _at most_ *two* query parameters and record them in the data file(s):
- One to use as subject ID (that would be the one that stays the same for each subject), and
- One to use as group number.

The latter -- the group number -- must usually be numerical and is typically used to assign between-subjects conditions in the script (e.g. the order of compatible vs incompatible blocks in the IAT). The 2nd Respondi query parameter is probably unsuitable for that.