Page Comparison

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• You want your panelists to take part in a project that was created by somebody else on another EFSinstallation or using external software. However, for the incentive management in your panel you would like to record which panelists have completed the survey.

• You want to conduct a conjoint survey using external survey software, the frame survey is to be created with EFS, though.

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Topics

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Authentication When Jumping From a Panel Survey to a Personalized Project

Since EFS 6.0, panel surveys can be used as target projects. I.e., you can route partici- pants from one panel survey to another, as long as both surveys are placed on the same installation. This option is used quite frequently, in particular in situations when the content of a survey has to be spread over several projects.

There are two possible settings:

• Only selected panelists can participate

• All panelists can participate

Only selected panelists can participate

If you want only selected panelists to participate in the two connected projects, please proceed as follows:

• 􏰀  Make sure the participating panelists are members of the samples of both projects.

• 􏰀  The link for the jump from primary to secondary project should look as follows: http://www.your-domain.com/xyz/ ?syid=573&sid=574&pcode=#panelist_code#&pses=#panel_ses#

This contains:

• syid: Project ID

• sid: Sample ID of the appropriate sample in the secondary project. You can find this ID by scrolling over the title in the overview of samples with the mouse pointer while observing the link in the status bar of your browser. It looks like this:

  http://www.your-domain.com/ front.php?module=panel_sampling&act=view_sample&pid=610&sid=611

• pcode: Panelist code. See Chapter 7.3.6 of the manual “EFS Panel 8.1”.

• pses: Session ID of the panelists. If you can trust that the panelists have cookies activated, you can drop the session ID. But if you want to allow the jump with cookies switched off, the session ID must be transferred.

All panelists can participate

If you want all panelists to participate in both projects or at least in the secondary project, please proceed as follows:

• Activate the option “All panelists can participate in the survey (independent from being in a sample for the survey)” in the Project properties menu of both projects resp. only in the secondary project.

• The link for the jump from primary to secondary project should look as follows: http://www.your-domain.com/xyz/

  ?syid=573&sid=574&pcode=#panelist_code#&pses=#panel_ses#

This contains:

• syid: Project ID

• 􏰀sid: Sample ID of the “internal” sample of the secondary project.

• pcode: Panelist code. See Chapter 7.3.6 of the manual “EFS Panel 7.1”.

• pses: Session ID of the panelists. If you can trust that the panelists have cookies activated, you can drop the session ID. But if you want to allow the jump with cookies switched off, the session ID must be transferred.

Transferring Data from the Primary to the secondary Project and storing these Data in URL Parameter

The return jump from the secondary to the primary project is a very different situation than the forward jump: The participant is not taken to the start page of a new project but resumes an already started project. Therefore, unlike in the case of the forward jump, the data transfer cannot be done using URL parameters: These can only be processed on the first page of a project. Instead, the data are transferred to user-defined variables (c variables).

The following steps are required:

• In the Project properties menu of the primary project you create the required user- defined variables. When doing so make sure that the file type matches the values to be transferred.

• After that, you enter the destination URL for the return jump in the secondary project. It looks as follows: http://www.efs-survey.de/xyz/ospe.php3

• To this URL you have to add

  • the appropriate user-defined variable of the primary project. In our example, this is “c_0001".

  • the value of the variable. This can be a constant value or also a participant- specific value dynamically inserted via wildcard. In our example, this is the participant variable “u_group”.

• The destination URL would then be, for example: http://www.efs-survey.de/xyz/ospe.php3?c_0001=#u_group#

Besides project folder and “return_tic”, the example URL contains a GET parameter “c_0001” with the value “11”.

Linking More Than Two Projects

It is possible to link more than two projects via external survey start. The following combinations are possible, for example:

• 1. project → 2. project → 3. project → 2. project → 1. project

• 1. project → 2. project → 1. project → 3. project → 1. project.

Please note that the participants always have to be redirected back along the same path they came. This is necessary as the “tic” parameters can only be used to transfer those data regarding session, jump page etc. of the previous project that are available in the current project.

• The path 1. project->2. project->3. project->2. project->1. project is possible.

• The path 1. project->2. project->3. project->1. project->2. project is not possible.

When redirecting from the second to a third project the options “Add return ticket” and “Add ospe.php3” have to be disabled. They are used for returning primary-project relevant information back to the primary project. They cannot be used to relay secondary-project relevant information to another project.

When analysing the data, please mind that the variable “external_lfdn” contains the “lfdn” of the primary project in all following projects.

Special Considerations when using External Software

You can rename the GET parameters “tic” and “return_tic” if this is required for redirecting to a survey that was created using external software.

External Software requires

The relevant function can be found both in the Edit page properties dialog (Figure 3.7) and in the Projects → {Selected project} → Project properties menu, “General options” section, in the following fields:

• Name of ticket variable (external start of survey)

• Name of ticket variable (when returning from an external survey)

External Software

It may happen sometimes that you wish to transfer a number of values while the external software is able to evaluate only one GET parameter. In such situations, please check whether there is another option for transferring the desired values.

Sawtooth, for example, can accept only one parameter, however, this may contain several values that are separated by comma. In this case it is possible to transfer both the “tic” parameter and other values as a comma-separated string.

Suppose you want to transfer the following values:

1, x, #tic

In the EFS primary survey you combine those in a value of the variable “a” as follows:

a=1,x,#tic#

Via the wildcard, “tic” is inserted at a precisely defined position in the URL: Sawtooth is now able to accept the resulting string and break it down by means of an analysis algorithm. This way, the value for “tic” can be extracted, stored, and subsequently transferred back.