Blocking and randomisation of questions

[DJkobo]

Hi everyone,

I have a form design question that i’m finding a little tricky to code.

I am trying to integrate a kind of choice experiment into my form.

Each respondent will essentially have to answer the same question 4 times in a row, but the values they can choose from are not the same for each respondent and question.

The 4 questions are grouped into ‘blocks’, and each respondent is allocated to one block.
Within each block, each question has different prices for different items for each question - I have called these the ‘choices’.

I am trying to design a form which:

1. evenly allocates blocks to respondents
2. once allocated to a block the respondent is given 4 questions where the 2 choices differ between blocks and they can also choose ‘None of these’.
3. the order of the choices is presented randomly to respondents.

I am trying to upload a file to illustrate this, but it says I am not allowed as I am a new user. Here is a table to hopefully show the structure of the choices:

|list_name | block | choice | label::English (en)|

|— | — | — | —|

|choice | 1 | 1 | Beef 1000|

|choice | 1 | 1 | Chicken 2000|

|choice | 1 | 1 | None of these|
|choice | 1 | 2 | Beef 500|
|choice | 1 | 2 | Chicken 3000|
|choice | 1 | 2 | None of these|
|choice | 1 | 3 | Beef 2000|
|choice | 1 | 3 | Chicken 2000|
|choice | 1 | 3 | None of these|
|choice | 1 | 4 | Beef 1500|
|choice | 1 | 4 | Chicken 500|
|choice | 1 | 4 | None of these|
|choice | 2 | 1 | Beef 1000|
|choice | 2 | 1 | Chicken 500|
|choice | 2 | 1 | None of these|
|choice | 2 | 2 | Beef 500|

Many thanks in advance!

[wroos]

Welcome @DJkobo,
In any case, you need to add a (unique) name column to the choices sheet.

Hint: Please, don’t forget always check your form with the Online validator, during development and before deployment, and to do systematic pretests, incl. data export, before data collection.

[Kal_Lam]

@DJkobo, maybe this post discussed previously should help you solve your issue:

Randomize Question

@arif_1234, you could do it as outlined in the image shared below. But note that this is an approach where you are randomly selecting one group where you have shuffled the questions beforehand. Also please be informed that this approach will solve your issue but it will be a bit tedious to manage and analyze your data. Note: Since the workaround has three groups I have used 3 within the calculation. If you have more or less group you could change the number accordingly. Say if you have 5 groups…

[DJkobo]

@Kal_Lam Thank you very much for your response. I’ve tried to investigate whether this would work, but this solution randomizes the question, but doesnt allow the questions to be blocked in 6’s. The questions and answers cannot be totally random i’m afraid. We have to stick with a blocking design so a pre-defined set of 6 questions gets asked depending on which block a respondent is allocated to.