The “external survey start” of EFS allows to send survey participants from one project to a second project and to redirect them upon completion. This can be necessary in the following situations, for example:
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.
Topics
Technical Background
The external survey start is based on the use of GET parameters. GET parameters are variable values that are transferred to a page via the URL. This is a well-established standard web technology. It has already been used in EFS for a long time, e.g. for the transfer of external data to a survey via URL parameters (see the manual “EFS Survey 8.1”, Chapter 3.7.13).
Constructing URLs with GET Parameters
When adding GET parameters to a URL the following rules apply:
The GET parameter(s) must be separated from the actual URL by a question mark (?). This way the server can distinguish the actual URL from the GET parameter(s).
If more than one GET parameter is added, then they must be separated from each other by &.
For every GET parameter the URL lists first the variable name, followed by an equation symbol (=) and ultimately the variable value to be transferred. In the example below, a and b are variable names, 1 and seminar are the variable values. Different types of data are possible: In the example, variable a with the value 1 is of the “integer” type, variable b with the value “seminar” is of the “text” type.