Doing periodic panel surveys

Hey folks,

the following study:
we have several groups (A,B,C) of subjects (A1, A2....). Each of the subjects will be asked the same questions several times within a defined interval (let's say 2 or 3 weeks) over a certain time span (3-12 months). The starting point of the panel is different for each group, the interval as well. The subjects are actually asked to keep a diary where they should make an entrance each 2 or 3 weeks.

What should be the general set up of this 'panel' study?
How can I realize the interval set up? Or should I design a new survey for each intervall?
How can I realize the setup of the different groups since they will start at different points in time with a different interval? Or should I design a new survey for each group?

I hope my descriptions are sufficient to understand the issue. Otherwise, just ask

Hopefully somebody can help me.

Kind Regards,
Ronny

Good questions and I guess there is probably no correct answer to this.

At the end of the day you have one big survey, because all the questions are the same, no matter who is answering. The only difference of the groups is the time they might answer.

So in theory you could run everything within one survey. This depends a little bit on how you want to analyze this and how you want to seperate the groups. Without further details, I can't give any tips there. You will need to decide this for yourself.

Assuming that it is no problem if the respondent accesses the survey outside of the period (or if this chance is very low), you can just use "uses left" and give the respondents the number of necessary responses for completing the whole thing.

If this would be a problem, you will need to create a token for each period and person and set the valid date of the token. Then you send an invitation email to them for each time. You can mark the tokens that you want to send a invitation to.

holch wrote: Good questions and I guess there is probably no correct answer to this.

Hehe, I was afraid, that there wouldn't be a correct answer

holch wrote: So in theory you could run everything within one survey. This depends a little bit on how you want to analyze this and how you want to seperate the groups. Without further details, I can't give any tips there. You will need to decide this for yourself.

We decided to do it in one survey.

holch wrote: Assuming that it is no problem if the respondent accesses the survey outside of the period (or if this chance is very low), you can just use "uses left" and give the respondents the number of necessary responses for completing the whole thing.

That was the instruction I needed.

holch wrote: If this would be a problem, you will need to create a token for each period and person and set the valid date of the token. Then you send an invitation email to them for each time. You can mark the tokens that you want to send a invitation to.

I hope that won't be necessary. We know our subjects and we do instruct them well, so I hope that a valid date for the token is not necessary.

Thanks a lot for the helping comments.

Cheers,
Ronny

If you have a certain "control" over the respondents, this should work fine and if it is the same content, you have everything nicely in one single database.

And you can always record the date and see if someone filled the questionnaire outside the period.