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How do I prevent respondants filling out multiple surveys

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11 years 1 month ago #91650 by mikeg
Hi,

I'm using LimeSurvey as part of a course I am teaching. I assign individual tolkens to each student and allow them to save and restart their survey later in the General Settings. However, I find that a number of students submit two surveys. One which is largely incomplete and the other which is complete. This is wreaking havoc on my grading scripts since there are two entries per student in some cases. Is there a way to avoid this problem such as forcing students to pick up where they left off rather than being able to start over?
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  • holch
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11 years 1 month ago #91651 by holch
This is weired. There should be different entries with the same token. Do you allow the usage of a token more than once?

One other thing: As a quick solution (until we find out what goes wrong) you could always delete the responses that are largely incomplete beofre you run your grading scripts.

I answer at the LimeSurvey forum in my spare time, I'm not a LimeSurvey GmbH employee.
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11 years 1 month ago #91919 by badronald
I am having a very similar problem. I am using Version 1.91+ Build 120302
I have a non-anonymous survey, cookies set =yes, participant may save and resume later=yes, allow editing after completion=yes, enable token based persistance =yes.
I am still receiving duplicate responses in answer table.
I have tried to recreate it myself but cannot seem to figure it out. One will be incomplete and one complete.
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  • DenisChenu
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11 years 1 month ago #91929 by DenisChenu
Did you check:
Enable token-based response persistence?

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11 years 1 month ago #92320 by ksihota
My issue is similar.

Version 2.00+ Build 130129

anonymized responses = no
cookies set = no
participant may save and resume later = yes
allow editing after completion = no
enable token based persistance = yes

The first time I noticed the problem was when a user reported an error and I noticed that the response had been completed even with the error, however they were able to go back in and complete another response.
I thought this was a browser problem so I set
enable token based persistance = yes (it was originally = no)
This did not stop the problem.
I then used a token that had already been used and found I was able to create another response using the completed token.
I checked the Token list and found that none of the completed survey's tokens had been set down to 0 uses. Thinking this was odd I manually set the used token to 0 and found I was unable to access the survey as i expected.

I therefore expect the problem is simply because the token use is not decrementing. The odd thing is that the token list was created using the CPD panel and when I had uploaded my lists from csv the token uses decremented no problem. I also noted that when I manually added several tokens into the same CPD list (that is not working)these tokens decremented as expected.

Have I set something wrong or is there some other issue?
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11 years 1 month ago #92344 by ksihota
Just checking now to see if bug report 07278 is the issue. found usesrow on line 958 of frontend_helper.php and replaced it with the new variable name.

Did a couple of checks and this appears to solve the problem.
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11 years 1 month ago #92580 by karencheah
I also can fill out the survey multiple times with the same token.

Version 2.00+ (130206)
Anonymous response: Yes
Cookies: Yes
Save and resume later: Yes
Editing after completion: No
Enable token based persistance: Yes / No (tried both)

Bug report 07278 doesn't seem to apply to me as there's no new variable name for "usesrow".

Please advise.

Thanks,
Karen
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11 years 1 month ago #92610 by ksihota
interesting, I upgraded to 130206 thinking the fix had already been applied (changed usesrow to new var) but it hadn't. I still had to go in and change this.
Is your token uses number decreasing after each use by the user?
Does it indicate that the survey has been completed?
Did you user get an error message when they submitted?

So far mine appears to be working as expected but I have not had a lot of responses to my survey since I made the fix so I am still checking into this.

Kim
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11 years 1 month ago #92642 by karencheah
Hi Kim,

Yes, I only allow single use of the token and it will decrease after the survey has been completed so that part works as expected. But I've since found out that it will allow you to submit many partial surveys until one is completed. I'm not sure how that's happening as I've just tested that if I save the survey (to resume later), I will get back to the same partially completed one whether I click on the invite link or the saved link (from resume email). I think it's when you don't save the survey but the partial response is actually saved although you can't access it again later, that's all.

I'll have to test this further. But if what I've described is correct, LS shouldn't keep the partially done survey if user has not clicked resume later since there's no way they'll be able to get back to that survey so that record is 'orphaned'. I'll update after testing the different scenarios.

Cheers,
Karen
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11 years 1 month ago #92645 by ksihota
I was under the impression that
Enable token based persistence: Yes
would deal with stopping multiple instances of the same token entry being created. It appears to work with my survey. I have had several students just close out of the survey without actually ending it by saving or submitting and I do not get any new instance being created.
The only time I was getting multiple entries for the same token was when the token table did not register a decrease in the token use to 0. Since the fix i mentioned above it has been working as expected.
I was surprised that your 130206 update included the fix and mine did not. I have updated to 130213 and it does have the changed file.

Good luck,
Kim
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11 years 1 month ago #92705 by karencheah
Here are the results of my first round of tests with "Enable token based persistence: No".

If participant ends survey without saving, the incomplete response is in the database but later disappears during the course of my tests but before the same participant completes the survey (must look into this a bit more). Clicking on the invite link will bring the participant back to the survey but the questions are empty. So you can go previous, next but without any questions to answer, very strange here.

If the participant saves the survey to resume later but did not opt for an email, the incomplete response is also in the database. The invite link brings participant back to the survey in progress without any need for name/password. I believe this is due to cookies.

Tried the above on a new browser, the invite link will load new survey with the option to load unfinished survey using name/password.

If participant resets browser and starts new survey again and completes it, the database will contain records for the completed survey and incomplete survey(s). Token use will be decreased correctly and in my case, no more uses so clicking on the invite link will not be able to start a new survey anymore.

Now I'm going to test with "Enable token based persistance: Yes" to see if there's any difference. I think I'll turn off cookies as that confuses things.
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11 years 1 month ago #92709 by karencheah
Tests continued...

I tried to set "Enable token based persistence" to "Yes" for an anonymous survey but was not able to do so as this parameter is not allowed for anonymous surveys. But then I realised that I managed to change that setting on my previous activated survey so I tried that; activate the survey first, then set "Enable token based persistence" to "Yes". That worked but I think it would be a bug. The setting would probably not have any effect since I've just got clarification that that means that there will be a link between the token and the response which is not allowed in anonymous surveys. Hope I haven't broken anything...

So the results...

If participant ends survey without saving, the incomplete response is in the database and when clicking on the invite link again, the survey resumes. I believe this is due to cookies although I turned that off! I tried in new browser, the invite link loads new survey. If I then complete the survey, the token will be used but the first incomplete response will remain, i.e., there are 2 responses, 1 complete and 1 incomplete (could be more if I kept restarting over with new browser).

I decided to stop testing there and just live with any incomplete responses.

Any advice on how to handle these issues would be much appreciated. So to summarise, we are doing token based anonymous surveys with resume allowed. How to prevent multiple incomplete responses in the database if participant starts over again after not saving?

Thanks all!

Karen
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