Randomize list of select_one and select_multiple questions

Hi everyone,

The release notes from November, 2018 point out that there’s now "Support for randomizing order of items in select_one and select_multiple questions.’

This will be incredibly useful to us but is there a post that provides more information about how I can add this feature through my XLSform? Something in the calculation field with begin_group, maybe?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

See Randomizing Choice Order. https://docs.opendatakit.org/form-question-types/#randomizing-choice-order

1 Like

Aaah… perfect. Thank you! Is there support for randomizing the order in which questions in a group appear as well?

For example, if there are 10 questions set to appear on a page, they would appear in a different sequence each time?

Not cleanly, but there are ways you can ‘fake’ it… For example, duplicate all the questions in various different random orders in several groups, and then use a random() function to pick which group to display using the group’s relevance. Its not truly ‘random’ - with 10 questions there 10! = 3628800 different permutations - but if you, say, hardcode 10 groups with a different permutation it may appear sufficiently random for your purposes. [or you can hardcode 3.5 million groups for a better result… :slight_smile: ]

There a a few threads on this topic on the ODK Forum.

1 Like