LimeSurvey manual - KCE Process Book | Process...

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LimeSurvey manual

Version; 2015-07-17

Authors: Carl DEVOS, Laurence Kohn

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ContentsIntroduction........................................................................................................................................3

Login in LimeSurvey ............................................................................................................................4

From the creation of a survey to the analyses .....................................................................................5

1. Create a survey .......................................................................................................................6

Define the survey settings ...........................................................................................................6

General settings ........................................................................................................................10

Add a user to your survey..........................................................................................................11

2. Add groups of questions........................................................................................................11

Create a new question group ....................................................................................................12

Add a group of questions from another survey..........................................................................12

Copy a group of questions from the same questionnaire...........................................................13

3. Add questions .......................................................................................................................14

Question types..........................................................................................................................14

How to add new questions in a group ......................................................................................20

How to copy questions in a group .............................................................................................24

4. Set conditions .......................................................................................................................25

5. Customize your questionnaire ...............................................................................................29

6. Add translations ....................................................................................................................30

7. Survey testing .......................................................................................................................31

8. Activate a survey ...................................................................................................................32

9. Invite participants .................................................................................................................34

Tokens ......................................................................................................................................34

Mailing......................................................................................................................................36

10. Send reminders .................................................................................................................40

11. Insert data manually..........................................................................................................41

12. View Results ......................................................................................................................42

13. Close a survey....................................................................................................................43

14. Quick statistics ..................................................................................................................44

15. Export a survey..................................................................................................................47

Export structures and archives ..................................................................................................47

Export the data .........................................................................................................................47

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IntroductionLimeSurvey (http://www.limesurvey.org/) is an open source web-based software to create online

surveys. Here is an example:

LimeSurvey also has basic tools to analyse the responses:

For advanced data analysis, it is better to export the results to a specific software like R, SPSS, SAS or

a spreadsheet software (e.g. LibreOffice or MS Excel).

This manual explains the basics to create and manage a survey. The official online documentation is

available at http://manual.limesurvey.org/.

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Login in LimeSurveyAs a LimeSurvey user, you need as login and a password to access the interface.

Go to http://www.kcenet.be/surveys/admin/ you should get the following screen:

1. Enter you Username

2. Enter your password

Ask your username and password to [email protected] , [email protected]

or [email protected]

3. If you wish, choose you language (the Default language is English)

4. Click on the “Login” button

5. If you forgot your password:

6. Click on the “Forgot your password?” link

7. Fill in the form with your username and email address and click on the “Check data” button;

you will receive a new password by email. In case of problem, please contact

[email protected] or [email protected].

Once you are logged in, here is what you should see:

YOU ARE HERE AT THE LEVEL “SURVEY”

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1. The server you are on (it could be KCE, EUnetHTA, or your local LimeSurvey if you have one)

2. your ID with a link to edit your preferences

3. LimeSurvey version (if you encounter a problem and need external help, it is a good idea to

mention the version)

4. Logout button to close your LimeSurvey session

5. Default administration page (“home”)

1. Choose an existing survey

2. See a list of surveys available (active, expired, inactive)

3. Create a new survey

Each survey has a status:

- inactive : the survey is not yet open (design phase)

- active: the survey is open, respondents can fill in the survey

- expired: the survey is closed, responses have been collected

From the creation of a survey to the analysesHere are the steps to get a survey running and analyse the results:

1. Create a survey

2. Add groups of questions

3. Add questions in the groups

4. Set conditions

5. Customize your questionnaire

6. Add translations

7. Test your survey

8. Activate your survey

9. Invite respondents to participate

10. Send reminder(s) (optional)

11. Insert data manually (optional)

12. View results

13. Close your survey

14. Basic results analysis with LimeSurvey

15. Export your results

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16. Thorough analysis with another software

1. Create a surveyTo create a questionnaire, see process note on online survey in process book

Define the survey settings

Tab ‘General’

1. click on the “+” sign to add a new survey

2. choose the main language (you can add extra languages afterwards)

3. choose a title (in the base language)

4. type a short description of the survey (this will appear in the list of public surveys available)

5. write the welcome message for the respondents

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6. if you want to propose a link at the end of the survey, enter the URL

7. if you want to propose a link at the end of the survey, enter the text of the link

8. enter the name of the contact person for the survey (in case of problem)

9. enter the email address for the contact person and for the bounce email. The “Bounce email”

field is to warn when an email invitation or reminder could not be sent (only if you use

LimeSurvey to manage your invitations (so that this person can correct or remove the email

addresses that bounce).

10. fill in the fax number (this is only useful for printed surveys, so they get the fax number to

send the filled in paper survey)

11. when you are done, click on the “Save” button

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Tab Presentation & navigation

Here are the main options for these settings:

1. Click on the “Presentation & navigation” tab (once you are in “General settings”, see above)

2. You can choose to have all your question on one page, one page per question or one page

per group (the default)

3. There are several templates to modify how your survey looks like

4. “Show [< < Prev] button” allows the respondent to go back to the previous question to

change his/her answer

5. At the beginning of the survey, do you want the respondent to know how many questions

s/he has to answer? (NB: Pay attention the number of questions that appear is the total

number of questions –> if conditional questions this total is not an accurate estimation of the

questions needed to be answered)

6. You can show or hide the group name and description

7. Do the question number and question code have to be displayed to the respondent? (NB:

This is useful during the test of the questionnaire – in order that ‘testers’ are able to report

problems and modification – deactivate it before to launch the final survey)

8. Click on the “Save” button

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Tab Publication & access control

1. Click on the “Publication & access control” tab (once you are in “General settings”, see

above)

2. Do you want that your survey appears on the public survey list (e.g.

http://www.kcenet.be/surveys/) so that anybody can complete the survey?

3. Start date

4. Expiry date: by setting the expiry date, you choose one way to close the survey

5. Set cookie will prevent a respondent to answer an anonymous survey (no access code has to

be provided to answer) multiple times with the same browser


Tab Notification & data management

1. Click on the “Notification & data management” tab (once you are in “General settings”, see

above)

2. Date stamp: record the date and time when the respondent submits the survey

3. Save IP address: record the IP address (computer network address)

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4. Save referrer URL: record the page from where the link was clicked to go to the survey

5. Save timings: record how long it took for the respondent to answer for each question; this

can be useful if you test your survey with some colleagues to make sure it does not take too

long to complete (if your survey takes too long to complete, you might have a lot of

uncompleted responses as people drop out)

6. Participant may resume later: for long surveys, the user might be allowed to stop and get a

code by email to resume later (NB: you don’t need to activate this if you use tokens – see

further)

Remark : To check and change settings afterwards

You can return to the settings afterwards. Go to the level ‘survey’ to check or change some settings

General settings

1. click on the pencil icon then on “General settings”

2. Make sure the name and email address of the survey administrator are correct.


Languages

The general settings is also the place where you can add extra languages:

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1. go to Survey properties > General settings

2. select the language you want to add

3. click on the “Add” button

4. click on the “Save” button (not shown)

Add a user to your survey

If you want another user to be able to make modifications to your survey, here is how you can add

him to your survey.

1. Make sure you that you are in your survey

2. Click on the pencil icon (Survey properties)

3. Click on “Survey permissions”

4. Select the user you want to add (it must me an existing LimeSurvey user)

5. Click on the “Add user group” button

6. If you want to modify the permissions of the user, click on the small pencil icon (“Edit

permissions”) on the line corresponding to the added user

2. Add groups of questions

In LimeSurvey, questions are organized in groups. In consequences, questions must be created in a

question group.

You first have to organize your questions in groups of questions. Put all questions you want on a

single page in the same group. You can create groups or use groups already existing in your

questionnaire or in another one.

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Create a new question group

To create a group:

1. Make sure you are in the right survey

2. Click on the “+” (the second one)

3. Add a title to the group of questions (you can choose later if you want the respondent to see

it or not)

4. (optional) Describe the group of questions

5. Click on “Save question group”

Below you will find some frequent group manipulations.

Add a group of questions from another survey

It is possible to export and import groups of questions:

1. Select the survey you want to work with

2. Select the question group you want to export

3. Click on the “lsg” logo to export the group of questions

4. (not shown) Choose a name and save the file

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5. Select the survey in which you want to import the question group

6. Click on the “Add new group” button (plus sign)

7. Click on the “Import question group” tab

8. Click on the “Browse...” button and choose you file (.lsg extension)

9. Click on the “Import question group” button

You should get the following:

Copy a group of questions from the same questionnaire

There is no possibility to copy a group of question, but there is an alternative way to do it: export the

group you want to copy, then import it.

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1. Select the group you want to copy

2. Click on the “export this question group” icon

3. Save the file with the .lsg extension

4. Click on the “Add new group to survey” icon

5. Click on the “Import question group” tab

6. Click on the “Browse…” button and select the .lsg file you just saved

7. Click on the Import question group

3. Add questions

You can add new questions or copy questions already presented in the questionnaire. Several type of

questions can be created:

Question types

In this section, some of the most used question types are presented. If you cannot find the

appropriate question type for your question, please have a look at the online documentation

(http://manual.limesurvey.org/Question_types).

Long free text

This is the default question type, the respondent can type text on several lines.

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Other free text question types are: short free text, huge free text, and multiple short text

Single choice questions

These question types are for closed-ended questions. There are several types, the most useful are

List (radio) and List (dropdown)

You can decide how many options the respondent can choose from. The difference is the way they

are displayed: use list radio (which shows all options) rather than dropdown (which shows only the

selected option) unless you need to gain room on your page.

List (radio) example:

List (dropdown) example:

Once you have chosen of these two question types, you need to provide the answers:

1. Click on the grid icon: “Edit answer options for this question”

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2. Change the answer code if needed

3. Type the answer option

4. You can add a new answer option by clicking on the “+” icon; the pencil icon is to customize

your test in HTML and the trash to delete the answer option

5. When you have entered all the answer options, click on the “Save changes” button

You can create and re-use label sets of questions

To create a new label set for a closed question (list or multiple choice):

1. Edit answer options for the question

2. Fill in the answer options and codes as you wish

3. Click on the “Save as label set” button

4. Select “New label set”, give it a name and save

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To use a predefined label set:

1. Edit answer options for the question

2. Click on the “Predefined label sets…” button

3. Select the label set you need

4. Click on the “Replace” button (or the “Add button” if you have already entered

some answer options that you want to keep)

Multiple choice questions

There are several options, the simplest is the checkbox (called multiple choice):

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To choose this question type, after having typed your question, do the following:

1. Select “Multiple Choice” in the question type:


3. Click on the grid to add the answer options to fill in: see the Error! Reference source not

found. section

Ranking

This question type allows the respondent to rank response options:

To choose this question type, after having entered your question text, do the following:

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1. Select “Ranking” in the question type:


3. Click on the grid to add the answer options to fill in: see theError! Reference source not

found. section

Ranking results from a previous multiple choice question

It is possible to take as input in a ranking question the answers from a previous multiple choice

question. The answer codes have to be the same, but the answer options (the text) can be different:

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To do that:

Make sure that the option codes match between the questions (e.g. A1 in the multiple choice

question must correspond to A1 in the ranking question)

Edit the ranking question (the second one), then click on “Show advanced settings” and in the logic

frame, fill in the “Array filter” field with the code of the first question:

How to add new questions in a group

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1. Make sure you are in the right survey and that you have selected a question group

2. Click on the third “+” sign to create a new question

3. Type the code of the question (e.g. t1 for test 1) ; choose any code without spaces you like, it

is just to be able to refer to it later ; the code can be hidden for the respondent

4. Type the question

5. (optional) Type a text that could help the respondent to answer your question

Add a picture

If you would like to insert an image in a part of the text (question, description,

help) here is the process to do it:

1. Place the cursor where you want to add the image

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2. Click on the “image” icon

3. If the image is already online (anywhere on the web), you can type the URL

4. Type the alternative text (in case the image cannot be shown)

5. If the image is on your computer or already on the server, click on the“Browse Server” button (then see below how to add the picture to the server)

6. When you have selected your image, click on the “OK” button

Browser server

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To upload a picture on the server, click on the browse server (see 5 above), then

7. Click on the “Upload” button, a file browser window appears

8. Select the image you want to upload

9. Click on the “Open” button

Your image is uploaded, double-click on it to select it.

If you want to select an image already uploaded on the server, click on the

“Upload” button, then double-click on the image you want to add.

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6. Choose the question type (see ‘question types section’ just after)

7. Change the question group (in case you changed your mind)

8. Do respondents need to answer this question?

9. Relevance equation: set to 1 means that this question will always appear to the respondent;

for conditional questions (see ‘set conditions’ further)

10. Show advanced settings, see below

11. Save by clicking on “Add question”

How to copy questions in a group

1. Select the question you want to copy

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2. Click on the “copy current question” button in the question toolbar

3. Fill in the code question with a new unused code

4. Change what needs to be adapted in the new question (text, question type, etc.)

5. If you don’t want to copy subquestions, answer options or advanced settings, untick them

6. Click on the “Copy question” button to save your new question

4. Set conditions

It is possible to have questions (or question groups) appearing only if certain conditions are met., e.g.

if answer to question x is A, jump to question y. This is replaced by conditions for questions to

appear.

To set the condition for a question group, please do the following:

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1. Select the question group

2. Click on the “Edit current question group” icon

3. Type in the relevance equation (see below)


For a question, it is similar:

1. Select the question

2. Click on the “Edit current question” icon

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3. Type in the relevance equation (see below)


Relevance equation

By default, the relevance equation is set to 1, which means that the question (group) will be shown.

If you set it to 0, the question (group) will never be shown.

If you want to set the condition, click on the “Set conditions for this question” icon to enter the

condition designer:

You should then see the following screen which will help you to create the condition:

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1. Select the question that should trigger the current question to be displayed

2. Select the comparison operator

3. Select the answer

4. Click on the “Add condition” button

The condition will then be printed on the top of the screen:

To return to the question (and exit the set condition wizard), please click on the “home” icon:

You will then see the relevance equation in the question screen:

You can also type in your relevance equation instead of using the condition designer. Note that if you

used the wizard, you cannot modify the question yourself:

To be able to edit the relevance equation yourself, you first need to delete the condition in the

designer (click on the trash icon):

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More information on the subject at the official documentation:

http://manual.limesurvey.org/Setting_conditions

It is also possible to add conditions on question groups, but there is no “wizard” to generate the

relevance equation, meaning that you will need to write it yourself. Please find inspiration in the

wizard for setting the conditions for the questions.

5. Customize your questionnaire

There are many settings that can be configured, here are the most useful:

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1. Hide tip: by default, some tips are displayed to help the respondent (e.g. “Choose one of the

following answers” if you chose English as the default language). If you set it to “Yes”, the tip

will be hidden, and you can add something in the “Help” if you wish (or in the question text)

2. Insert page break in printable view: this is only for printing, not on screen

3. Chart type : this is the default chart type that will be displayed when you look at the results

(you can always switch from chart type when you view it); the two options are “bar chart”

and “pie chart”

6. Add translationsYou can now add a translation for each question, group, the introduction, etc.: when editing

questions (or groups), there is an additional tab for the other language:

You can click on it to write the translation (question and help).

Another way of completing the translation is to use the quick-translation:

1. In the Tools menu, select Quick-translation

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2. The text to be translated is grouped in tabs, click on it to access this part

3. Fill in the translation (original text on the left)

4. (not shown) Click on the “Save” button at the bottom when you are done

5. To get out of the quick-translation tool, click on the home icon

7. Survey testingNow that your survey is ready, you would like to have it tested by some other people to make sure it

is ready to be activated.

By default, only users with a login can test a survey that is not yet active. This can be changed by your

administrator:

1. Click on the Global settings icon

2. Click on the Security tab

3. Change “Survey preview only for administration user to “No”

4. Click on the save button

From now on, anybody with the survey URL will be able to test your survey:

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8. Activate a surveyWhen your survey is ready, you can activate it by clicking on the “play” symbol (green triangle):

This will show you the following screen:

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You can then decide on some settings. If you are unsure whether you should answer “Yes”, check the

survey settings section.

Note: once you have activated the survey, you will not be able to add or delete questions or question

groups, nor add answer options. The only thing you will still be able to do, is edit the text of the

questions and responses (i.e. correct spelling or make a sentence clearer).

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Once you have clicked on the “Save / Activate survey” button, you will get the following screen:

If you select “Switch to closed-access mode”, respondents will need a unique access code that you

have to send to each participant (they are called tokens).

If you select “No, thanks”, you need only to send the URL (internet address) of the survey to allow a

participant to access the survey. Once you click on it, you will be send to the homepage of the survey,

where you can see the URL you need to communicate to participants:

9. Invite participants

Tokens

If you need to track respondents and make sure that they only answer once, you can use an identifier

called a “token”: this is a code that the respondent needs to access the survey.

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1. Click on the “Token management” icon: if there are not tokens yet in the survey, you will be

proposed to create them (see below), otherwise, you will see the Token control panel.

2. Click on the “Initialise tokens” button

3. Click on the “Continue” button (not shown)

You then see the token summary:

You can then either (3) type in your tokens one by one in the LimeSurvey interface, or (4) import

a comma separated values file (.csv) created with a software (e.g. a spreadsheet software, like

LibreOffice Calc of Microsoft Excel).

Example of a CSV file content to be uploaded:

email,firstname,lastname

[email protected],Nadia,Benahmed

[email protected],Gudrun,Briat

[email protected],Cécile,Camberlin

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You can build your file using a spreadsheet software (e.g. LibreOffice Calc, MS Excel) that you

then export to a .csv file. Make sure that the values are separated with commas (,) and not semi-

colons (;) by opening the .csv file in a text editor (e.g. Notepad++):

If you uploaded a .csv file without tokens, you need to have them generated by LimeSurvey:

1. In the Token control screen, click on the “Generate tokens” icons

2. Click on the “Yes” button to add the tokens to the list of participants

The token needs to be sent to the user in the invitation so that (s)he can gain access to the

survey:

You can then invite the participants by either sending them the URL (internet address of the survey)

by email, or you can let LimeSurvey do it for you.

Mailing

Mailings with LimeSurvey using the tokens is rather easy if you have filled in the email address, first

and last names.

Before activating your survey and sending the invitations, you might want to review the email

templates:

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1. In the Token control panel, click on the “Edit email templates” icon

2. Change the different templates (available by clicking on the tabs) to your liking and save

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After you have activated your survey, you can send the invitations:

1. Click on the “Send email invitations” icon

2. Change the template if needed

3. Click on the “Send invitations”

You will then see a confirmation screen:

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Here is an example of email received:

If you want to make your own mailing, you will need to note at least the email address and token of

the participant, and for each participant to send a link which is the survey URL followed by a slash,

then the token and another slash:

So, for this survey, if you want to send the URL for the participant with the token xyz123, you would

need to insert the following link in the body of the email:

http://www.kcenet.be/surveys/index.php/624268/lang-en/xyz123

You can see with the secretariat for an automated mailing.

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10. Send remindersIf you do it with LimeSurvey, this is quite similar to sending emails:

1. Click on the “Send email reminder” in the Tokens control panel

2. Modify the template if needed

3. Click on the “Send reminders” button

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If you do it manually, you first need to determine who should get a reminder. One way to do it is to

export all token and select participants that have not yet completed the survey:

1. Click on the “Export tokens to CSV file” icon

2. Click on the “Export tokens” button

You will get a .csv file that you can open with a spreadsheet software or a text editor: delete all lines

which have a “Y” to the completed variable:

You can then use the remaining lines to make your mailing.

11. Insert data manuallyYou might have some responses on paper that you want to enter in your survey.

1. Make sure you are in the right survey

2. Click on the “Responses” icon

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3. Click on “Responses & statistics”

4. Click on the “Data entry” icon

5. Choose the language (if applicable)

6. Fill in the survey with the answers

7. When you are done, click on the “Submit” button at the bottom (you cannot click on it if all

mandatory questions have not been answered)

12. View Results

Most of the actions concerning the results are available in the “Responses & statistics” window:

Here is how to see the results once you have clicked on the “Responses & statistics” icon (see above).

Each response is showed as a row, answers to question are shown in column.

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1. Click on the “Display responses” icon to see the responses

2. Alternatively, you can see the latest responses by clicking on the “Display last 50 responses”

icon

3. You can see whether a respondent has answer the survey until the last question (completed

Y / N)

4. You can filter to keep only the completed responses or the uncomplete responses only

5. For each response, you can:

a. view the response details (magnifier icon)

b. edit this response (pencil icon)

c. delete this response (trash icon)

13. Close a surveyTo close a survey, you have two options:

- Set the date to end the survey, see the survey settings section

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- Click on the “stop” button of an active survey:

1. Click on the “stop this survey” button

2. Click on the “expire survey”

As you can read, it is safer to expire a survey than to deactivate it (because you would lose all

responses).

N.B.: in case you are conducting a Delphi survey, you will need to Deactivate the survey rather to

expire it (see Delphi manual); still it is worth considering an export before deactivating the survey.

14. Quick statisticsYou can see quick statistics (figures or graphs):

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1. Click on the “Get statistics from these responses” icon

2. Select the responses you want to see statistic from (e.g. all responses, completed response

only…)

3. Select the output (figures and/or graphs) and the output format (web page, PDF, Excel)

4. Select the question groups and/or questions you want to view statistics from

5. Click on the “View statistics” button

The screen is separated in three parts:

- General filters

- Response filters

- Statistics (not shown on the above screenshot)

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You can always choose to show or hide any of these three parts by clicking on the “maximize” or

“minimize” button [6] (e.g. once you have seen the statistics, you might want to refine your data

selection).

Here is an example of the output on the browser (HTML) if both text responses and graphics are

selected:

1. You can switch between bar chart (shown) and pie chart (not shown)

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15. Export a survey

Export structures and archives

You can either export the questions and answer options (in a .lss file) or export the questions, answer

options and the responses (in a .lsa file, for active or expired surveys only):

1. Go to Export…

2. For the structure only (not the respondents’ answsers), click on “Survey structure (.lss)”

3. For the structure and answers (for active or expired surveys), click on “Survey archive (.lsa)

You will then have the possibility to save the file to be archived. It can then be imported in any

instance of LimeSurvey (EUnetHTA or another one, e.g. on your local computer is you have a running

instance).

Export the data

1. Go to the “Responses & statistics” screen

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2. Click on the “Export results to application” icon

3. Select the format of the export file

4. Select the response: a range, all response, completed response only, or uncompleted

response only

5. Choose what to export from the questions: code, full or abbreviated question text

6. Choose what to export from the answers: codes or full answers

7. Select the questions & answers that you want to export (by default, everything is selected)

8. Choose the token fields to be exported if needed

9. Click on the “Export data” button . You will download the export file in the chosen format

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