Academic surveys for theses and scientific research

Methodological control

Protecting data quality during collection is more reliable than trying to clean it up afterwards.

• Randomization against order effects

  Shuffle, rotate or reverse options, questions on a page, fields within a block and matrix rows and columns. Anchor items that must stay in place, such as instructions. Randomization is seeded per response or per participant, and the order shown is stored with every response.

• Subsets from an item pool

  Use the How many to show? setting on a Block to present each participant with only a set number of questions from a long item pool. Participant burden drops while every item is still spread across the sample.

• Inclusion criteria

  Remove participants who do not meet your criteria with the Disqualify action; these records appear on the Responses tab with a disqualified status. Use Show/Hide and Jump to page rules to route subgroups to different questions.

• Validation at collection

  Required fields, value ranges, selection counts and constant sum checks prevent missing or invalid answers at the moment of collection. Answers are validated again on the server when submitted.

Ethics committee and participation consent

Ethics approval and the duty to inform participants rest with the researcher. YouReply Survey gives you the tools to put these steps into the survey itself.

1. 1

   Add consent text

   When you fill in the consent text under Response Behavior in Settings, participants see a Participation Consent screen before the questions and choose either I have read and agree or decline. Include the purpose of the study, ethics committee details and your contact address.

2. 2

   Use a consent checkbox if needed

   To have participants separately confirm they have read the privacy notice, add the consent checkbox question from the palette. Because it is a question, the confirmation is also part of the response data.

3. 3

   Decide on anonymity

   With anonymous responses on, IP address and location are not stored. If you add a meta info question, a hidden field or questions such as name, email or student number, responses can still be linked to a person; do not add them if you promise participants anonymity.

4. 4

   Take care with special category data

   Special category data such as health, beliefs or ethnic origin, and participants under 18, bring additional obligations. The details are in the Researcher Responsibilities document.

Data file and data quality

When collection ends, you download the data as Excel (.xlsx) or UTF-8 CSV.

• The codebook sheet in the Excel file lists every question, its type and which label each option code stands for, which makes it easier to attach the dataset to your thesis or share it with another researcher.
• Every question has answer and answer code columns plus time on question and answer time, and every response has a total time.
• There is no automatic speeder or bot detection: you screen out responses completed unusually fast by applying your own criteria to the time columns.
• The completed responses only option keeps partial records out of the file.
• You can run statistical analysis in YouReply Analyze and qualitative coding of open-ended answers in YouReply Qualitative; both are offered as separate subscriptions.

Related guides and documents

• Logic and randomizationSet up rules, blocks and random order step by step.
• Response limitsMax Responses and date range settings.
• Exporting responsesThe codebook, time columns and export options.
• Deleting your account and dataHow to have your account and survey data deleted.
• Researcher ResponsibilitiesObligations for special category data and child participants.
• Data Processing AgreementYour duties as controller and ours as processor.
• PricingLimits and prices of every plan, including Academic.