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considering LimeSurvey but have questions

  • dhawk312
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6 years 11 months ago #151953 by dhawk312
I'm a long time Qualtrics user. Recently my university bought me a very powerful server for my lab. I am currently testing LimeSurvey to see if it will fit my lab's needs so I can stop paying for Qualtrics. After playing around with the free user account here, I cannot figure out a couple (seemingly) very similar design procedures.

1) I use 1-5, 1-7, and 1-9 anchors in my item responses. How can I manually create 1-7 or 1-9 anchors? Only 1-5 or 1-10 are available via the UI.

2) For my experimental conditions, I cannot figure out how to randomly assign participants. In Qualtrics I achieve this by setting a Randomizor in the SurveyFlow where 50% (or whatever appropriate percentage) are randomly assigned to a condition and 50% to the other condition. I tried doing this in LimeSurvey but the amount of options was overwhelming and they made little sense to me (note, I am not a programmer, and the branching options seem to written in programmer lingo).

3) The UI is quite clunky and not very user-friendly. I looked up tutorials but many were out of date. Qualtrics has QualtricsU tutorials on their website and lots of documentation written in researcher-oriented language. Does LimeSurvey has anything similar? My undergrad and grad students can easily jump into Qualtrics, but LimeSurvey looks like it's going to take some training time.

4) Any comments, suggestions, advice from others who have transitioned from Qualtrics to LimeSurvey that can help with switching over? I've been using Qualtrics for a very long time, and I use a lot of advanced features around piped text, inserting pictures or videos for manipulations and recording times spent on the page, pulling embedded data from weblinks (e.g., sona systems id numbers), and so forth. I feel comfort with Qualtrics' design, although the new redesign they pushed out last summer is awful.

Thanks.
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6 years 11 months ago #151958 by holch
Replied by holch on topic considering LimeSurvey but have questions

dhawk312 wrote: 1) I use 1-5, 1-7, and 1-9 anchors in my item responses. How can I manually create 1-7 or 1-9 anchors? Only 1-5 or 1-10 are available via the UI.

With anchors I guess you mean answer options / items of the scale? Just use the normal Array question type (I assume you are working with array questions). With the normal array question type you can create your own scale (called "label set").

2) For my experimental conditions, I cannot figure out how to randomly assign participants. In Qualtrics I achieve this by setting a Randomizor in the SurveyFlow where 50% (or whatever appropriate percentage) are randomly assigned to a condition and 50% to the other condition. I tried doing this in LimeSurvey but the amount of options was overwhelming and they made little sense to me (note, I am not a programmer, and the branching options seem to written in programmer lingo).

There are quite a few explanations on how to create a random number via expression manager in an equation question. So you would create a random number between 1 and 2 in the case of 50/50 and the show / hide the respective questions via EM (or conditions). Actually quite easy if you know how to do it, at the beginning probably not that intuitive as in Qualtrics.

3) The UI is quite clunky and not very user-friendly. I looked up tutorials but many were out of date. Qualtrics has QualtricsU tutorials on their website and lots of documentation written in researcher-oriented language. Does LimeSurvey has anything similar? My undergrad and grad students can easily jump into Qualtrics, but LimeSurvey looks like it's going to take some training time.

Well, here we go. Free vs. expensive license. A lot of the development is done by voluntaries and of course there are not as many resources available as in companies like Qualtrics, that have quite a big budget. For an open source app I find the documentation of LS very good, but it is for sure not ideal. However, the forum support here is pretty good in my opinion and there are many universities who's students use Limesurvey without any training. Will there be a learning curve: for sure. Especially if you are used to another software. If you start from scratch it is often easier to get into the new processes.

4) Any comments, suggestions, advice from others who have transitioned from Qualtrics to LimeSurvey that can help with switching over? I've been using Qualtrics for a very long time, and I use a lot of advanced features around piped text, inserting pictures or videos for manipulations and recording times spent on the page, pulling embedded data from weblinks (e.g., sona systems id numbers), and so forth. I feel comfort with Qualtrics' design, although the new redesign they pushed out last summer is awful.

I don't know Qualtrics, but I have heard that it is pretty simple to use. So you might have some learning curve at the beginning. Limesurvey at the moment does not have the most intuitive UI, I agree with you. I think that even the previous UI (in 2.05/2.6) was better and I was one of the people who was asking for a more modern interface. Unfortunately the changes were not ideal. So you will need to decide if you can live with this UI of Limesurvey and are able to administrate the installation, make updates, etc. or if you rather go the SAAS aproach and continue with Qualtrics.

I answer at the LimeSurvey forum in my spare time, I'm not a LimeSurvey GmbH employee.
No support via private message.

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6 years 11 months ago #151967 by jelo

dhawk312 wrote: from others who have transitioned from Qualtrics to LimeSurvey that can help with switching over?

I'm not aware of heavy users which switched from Qualitrics to LimeSurvey. If you have a lot of different surveys, which are different in structure, you will stick to Qualtrics. LimeSurvey is more like a survey framework. You will need to apply a lot of workarounds to get the same features as in Qualtrics. But you might provide your most complex survey to do a check with us. Would be a good task for all of us to see how far LimeSurvey has come in terms of feature completeness.

1.) You can use the "array question type" to add scales as you like 1-7, 1-9 all possible.
The additional questionstypes are adding a bit of confusion when just looking around.
manual.limesurvey.org/Question_type_-_Array

2.) There is no feature like survey flow in LimeSurvey. You can use a comfortable condition manager (GUI) and use relevance equations in combination with Expression manager (Code).
Surveyflow:


Conditionmanager:


E.g. random branching has to be coded via a random number, which is done via a coding line inside a equation question. Random number between 1 and 3
Code:
{if(is_empty(self),rand(1,3),self)}
You then would access this random number and use relevance equations or the conditions manager to show question/question group if randombumber = 1 / = 2 / =3. That way you get your three 33% branches.

3.) What version of LS did you use? The manual is still outdated, which is not that unusual for a open source project. There are still users of the LTS (the older branch), which explains why there is still demand for the old manual as well.

4.) Provide a complex survey here to make a check with us. I sometimes hear things like 99% can be done in LimeSurvey. Personally I don't think that is the case. In terms of time you need to get things done, LimeSurvey can cost you hours which can be done in minutes in other tools. If you're more a developer you can see LimeSurvey as a good survey framework. If you are doing simple surveys, it is a great tool. But if you need things like looping, skip logic, request response (vs. force response) and many other little thing you might took for granted in survey tools, you will be surprised to find it not in LimeSurvey.


I invite you to provide a typical survey and the amount of time you need to spent creating it in Qualtrics.
Let's do a real time test.

As long as you don't need to provide support to your students for using LimeSurvey you'll be fine.

The meaning of the word "stable" for users
www.limesurvey.org/forum/development/117...ord-stable-for-users
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