In cases where you need to identify the participant, you can set up the survey to automatically include an identifier; in this guide, we will use a StudyID field, although another unique identifier can be used such as a name or email address. It is best to only do this in surveys that do not ask for any personal or sensitive data.

Prerequisites


Before you progress with this guide, you will need:

  • Some experience with using SNAP 11 and the SNAP 11 web host
  • A SNAP survey ready to be published
  • A list of participants, email addresses and a unique identifier field - this guide will use the StudyID field as an example

Steps


Setting up your survey to include a database of respondents


Have your survey open in the SNAP 11 desktop app, then select 'File', then 'Publish. Scroll down until you see 'Paradata', then from this menu, select 'Respondent', then tick 'Use in Survey'. Once that has been done, then select 'Publish'.


This will create and extra question field called ID.name. For this to function properly, this field must be hidden. To do this, highlight the ID.name field, right-click, then select 'Hide variables'.


After it has been hidden, it should look like the below:



Setting up a database of your respondents


Open up Excel, or your spreadsheet software of choice,  then create the following headers: Name, Email Address, StudyID


Please note that you can use the email address field as the identifier, if you are then the StudyID field can be removed.



Adding your participant database to your spreadsheet


On your SNAP survey, click on 'File', then 'Database link', then 'New'. Tick the box for 'Webhost Invites/Logins/Seedings', then click 'Next'.


Then, click on 'Select Database File', then navigate to and select the spreadsheet with your participants, then in the 'Select the Table to use' section, select the sheet in your spreadsheet that has the participant information on it. Click 'Next'.


Now, tick the 'Log in respondent' option, then select the login field as the identifier you want to use (here we're using StudyID), tick both the 'Send email invitations and reminders' and 'Seed database data into questionnaires' options, then ticket the 'Identify respondents in the response data' option (the 'Respondent' paradata variable is what was set up at the start of this guide if you still need to set this up, please see section 'Setting up your survey to include a database of respondents'). Click 'Next'.


Now you will need to create your invitation and reminder emails. Use the text box provided to write these emails. These emails also require you to include a survey location, which is a link to your survey. To add this, click on 'Insert' then 'Survey location'. You will then be given another text box where you can either say something like 'Click Here' or the title of your survey.


Your emails should look something like the below image. You should also have the 'Automatically log into survey' option ticked. Click 'Next'.


You should now see the below screen where you will see a list of your database fields that you can use to feed into your survey. Here you can set your identifying field to the SNAP Variable 'ID.name' from the drop-down menu. You can also set any other fields you wish to populate back into the survey at this stage using the drop-down menus next to each database field. Once finished, click 'Next'.


You should now see a small summary screen with all your settings. If all looks correct, then you can click on 'Finish', but if not, you can click on back to change anything here. Once finished, you can click on 'close' in the Database linkage window.


Now that the participant database has been linked to your survey, you can publish it on the SNAP webhost (a guide on how to do this can be found here - Uploading Surveys to the Snap Webhost). You can also test if your invitations are working by sending one to yourself from the 'Messages' tab in the webhost.



If you require more information, advice or support please email us at digitalresearch@abdn.ac.uk