My opinion:

Randomizing the order of question groups (pages) is more urgently needed.

If we can randomize pages but not questions, I can, if necessary place one question on each page to force random question order.

However, if we can randomize questions but not pages, I don't see how I can fake a random page order.

Not sure I said that very clearly. Did it make sense?

jelo wrote:
How is it strange? It is most flexible and very easy to configure. Just edit the questions you want to be in the same rand group and enter the same freely choosable name in each question for the new randomization attribute.

The advantage is that the so randomized questions can span across different question groups (in fact the implementation is not related to question groups at all).

So for example you can pick question 1a from question group a, question 5b from question group B and question 3c from question group c, just put them into your randgroup1 and these three question will be shown in randomized oredr, but at their destined places in the survey.

@JoyLaneResearch: That is what I thought and this seems not to exist yet. The function that Mazi was referring to is basically the possibility to define a certain "group" of questions (not to be mistaken by the already available question groups). The questions in the defined group of questions can be randomized. This is already a nice thing to have, but then, as you said, randomizing question groups is a more common scenario in market research. Let's hope this will come for one of the next releases.

c_schmitz wrote:
I agree with Carsten. This question randomization is quite simple, but flexible. First I thought it was strange too, because the example questionnaire was a little confusing. I didn't really get what it did. Honestly, at the moment I don't see many situations or research designs, would require this level of flexibility in randomizing questions the way it is shown in the sample questionnaire. But as long as you can define some questions that can be randomized, I am already happy.

I also agree that the randomization of question groups would be the more important one, as there are several survey designs that might require this. But I assume that it is more complicated to randomize question groups, than to randomize questions, otherwise they would probably have implemented it first.

And: while I currently can't really think of survey designs that would require the scenario that Carsten was describing, I can imagine that there are survey designs out there, that need this kind of randomization, I just didn't come across them, but others might need this quite a lot.

c_schmitz wrote:
So I got the wrong impression from the example survey. I overlooked
the different group name and didn't realized the different wording "Randomization Group Name"

That way it is a fine idea. I am sorry that I didn't catch that.

Is there a way to get a overview of the defined randomization groups.

Perhaps a feature request to get a overview of conditions,mandatory,randomization etc. I use the print version to check these things.

holch wrote:
I also agree that the randomization of question groups would be the more important one, as there are several survey designs that might require this. But I assume that it is more complicated to randomize question groups, than to randomize questions, otherwise they would probably have implemented it first.[/quote]

Perhaps the concept of these randomization groups (which are a collection of questions as I learned) can be done more common. Tagging questions with different collection names and apply certain functions like randomization to these collections. Collections of Collections. Not sure if the current data structure can be used to allow such collections at ease.

The current randomization feature seems to be useful and not that seldom.
I still see matrix questions about a range of products. And matrix questions in a row are bad as hell the randomization prevents that the results cause too much damage

> And matrix questions in a row are bad as hell
> the randomization prevents that the results cause too much damage

Well, this is more of a even distribution of bad results, isn't it. While it is something you might want to do if there is no other way, I highly recommend all researchers to generally improve the way they ask people, because what is the point of asking questions, where you already know that the results will be bad anyway? I know, some clients really insist, but...

holch schrieb:
Just wondering - how much of this has now been implemented in LimeSurvey 2.00+?

1. I see on the "Edit Group" page there is now an option, "Randomization group". Does this mean that groups can now be shuffled?
2. I see on the "Edit Question" page there is now an option: 'Get order from previous question.' This is a great feature. Is there any way to implement that at the GROUP level? So that if Group 1 was randomized in X order, Group 2 can also inherit this order?