I'm trying to develop a survey that gathers unique personal data from logged in members, such that I can ongoing-compile large data for statistical analysis, yet have them still be able to come back in a month/year and re-edit their own responses.

Site is cassia.org, which is information about lyme disease treatments, with some 9,000 unique visitors/mo. -- The mission is to gather a base of response as to "what worked, what did not" (and under what circumstances, etc.

My desire is to have a unique login section where they will be able to post this data -- while still being able to come back and change it over time. And, as such, I desire to never close this survey. Secondly, rather than to have them respond by email (which will already be vetted in the login section) I desire this to open a frame page, without the use of the email invitation.

Can these things be accomplished (either within LimeSurvey, or add-on)? As a new user, I don't see login info; but I can always get this through third party -- Drupal, Joomla, etc (albeit swatting a fly with a hammer.) Still, I've been working on this project for five years, looking for a solution until I came across you this week.

Anyone?

Well.. this is currently not possible with LimeSurvey 1. It is however a feature scheduled for later versions of LimeSurvey 2 - so you will have to be patient.

There is no release date on LS2 (yet).

Thank you, Carsten! I am grateful for the quick response, and the heads up, so that I can help to plan my course of action.

I've been almost ten years trying to get this up and working, so time's not critical. And for that matter, every good survey should really have a trial sample anyway to know how to best produce the final, right?

If you could though, I'd be grateful for whatever clarification that you can give me on this: when you refer to "not now - then.." are you referring to the feature that allows them to change responses over time? Or the login password stuff? Or both?

And although no one likes to answer this quesion (and everyone asks) any idea when the version might come out? More like one year, or five years?

Again, thanks for your reply!

Hi Donzo,

When you talk about "changing responses over time", you don't actually mean that they delete their old answer, and replace it with a new one do you? Wouldn't you be wanting to have multiple answers saved to the same question, with datestamps, so you could trace the changes over time?

(Just interested in how you would want to use the info).

Jason

Thanks Jason,

My desire is to have "live document" vs a snapshot picture in time. In other words, yes, I would want them to have the ability to say "a year ago, I felt this -- but currently I feel this." This way, in theory, if there are 100,000 respondents, the survey results would show the best "today" picture of those 100,000 people.

I desire to statistically analyze the data, and my ideal mission is to be able to say something like, "..statistically speaking, based on our best picture today, this is what's going on out there right now."

As far as the time-stamp, I intend to already work in three different timeframe-type questions: initial treament, mid-treatment, and current situation. So, this should take in the over-time picture.

I know it's perhaps a little unusual, as most people normally won't desire to come back to a survey that they filled out some five years earlier -- but this is a group of people writing about their medical experience (which is why the need for password-protected area); and many of these would be inclined to come back and update the info. Or perhaps I can do an annual invitation email. And I could always statistically weight the "date of most recent response."

I think it would be a good resource. And I believe the data I'd glean would have great ability and implication to help guide the medical community as to what treatments are working or not.

Thanks for the input!