Qualtrics Tutorials: Requiring Kent State Login for Qualtrics Forms

For some of your surveys, you may wish to restrict access to only verified Kent State users. For example, if you're an instructor, you may want to create a survey or quiz for your course, and want assurance that only students enrolled in the course have completed the survey. If you're an administrator, you may wish to create a feedback survey, but want to make sure that no one from outside Kent State can complete the survey.

November 2023: These instructions have been updated to work with changes to Kent State's single sign-on (SSO) authentication.

Directions

1. Open the survey you want to require logins.
2. Click Survey Flow.
3. Add an Authentication block: Click Add a New Element Here, then click Authenticator.
   1. Set Authentication Type to SSO.
   2. Set SSO Type to Shibboleth.
   3. Set Connection to Azure Login.
   4. Uncheck the box for Associate Respondent with Panel.

4. The Authentication block works exactly like Branch Logic: any survey content that we want to “hide” behind the login needs to be “nested” underneath the Authentication block. Click and hold the Move button inside the block survey questions, then drag it underneath the Authentication block. Repeat this for each block or element of your survey that should be "locked" behind the login.

   

5. When finished, click Apply in the Survey Flow window to save your changes.

Because authentication is treated as a block in the Survey Flow, you can choose to require a login for your entire survey (by putting the authentication at the beginning of the survey), or only require authentication for certain blocks of your survey (by placing survey blocks before or after the authentication branch).

(Optional) Recording the User's Email Address

By default, this process will require the user to go through the authentication process in order to access the survey, but the user's email address will not be recorded in the survey dataset. However, for some forms, you may want to require authentication and record the authenticated user's Kent State email address. For example, if you are creating a registration form or application form specific to Kent State, it is a good idea to record the email address of the authenticated user, even if you have a survey question that would ask the respondent to enter this information.

To save the authenticated user's email address to your survey dataset, open Survey Flow and modify your Authentication branch with the following settings:

1. Check the box labeled Capture respondent identifying info.
2. Click Add Embedded Data.

3. This will display two text entry boxes with an equals symbol (=) in between.

   1. In the text box on the left, enter a variable name to represent this information in your survey dataset. In the example screenshot below, we've used the variable name UserEmail, but you can use any name you like, as long as it does not contain spaces or special characters. (We recommend not using the name RespondentEmail, because Qualtrics already uses that variable name in email panels.)

   2. In the text box on the right, enter the word:

      email

      This must be an exact match, or else the data will not be recorded correctly.

      

4. When finished, click Save.

This will add an embedded data variable to your survey dataset containing the email addresses of the users who have logged in to the survey and submitted responses. When you download your survey data, this variable appear in dataset with the rest of your survey questions.

What will users experience?

If you are a Kent State Qualtrics user and have added an authentication element to your survey following the instructions on this page, then your users will automatically be redirected to the same Kent State login page they use for all Kent State applications. After successfully authenticating, they will be redirected back to the survey.

If your authentication block is the first element in the survey flow, then when users navigate to your survey's link, they will automatically be redirected to the Kent State SSO login page. This process happens near-instantaneously, and users may not realize that they have reached your survey. You may want to add a "landing page" block to your survey and place it immediately before the authentication block. You can do this by creating a new block and adding a Text/Graphic question with a message introducing the survey and letting users know that they will be redirected to the login page when they click the "Next Page" button. This lets users know that they have reached the survey they expected to reach, and also ensures they are not surprised by a login page they are not expecting.