Qualtrics Tutorials: Sending Respondents a Copy of their Survey

Sometimes, your respondents may wish to have a copy of their survey responses, or they may wish to receive confirmation that their survey response was received. This is especially true if you are using a Qualtrics survey for a "higher-stakes" form, such as an application form or a feedback form. As the survey creator, there are two options you can use to make it easy for respondents to save a report of their responses and/or receive an email confirmation that their response was received.

This method changes the end-of-survey outcome so that instead of seeing a simple thank-you message, the user is shown a report of their responses that can be printed or saved to PDF. This approach can be used alone or in conjunction with sending a confirmation email (method 2 below).

When to use: You want respondents to see a summary report of their answers upon completing the survey that can be printed or saved as a PDF.

Directions

1. In the survey editor, scroll to the end of your survey. Click the End of Survey box to make the Edit end of survey options appear in the sidebar. Click the End of survey message dropdown, then click Include response summary.

If you have a branching survey with multiple ending outcomes, you can also apply this option to individual End of Survey elements in the Survey Flow.

This method requires you to put a question on your survey collecting person’s email address. It then uses Email Triggers and Piped Text to send the person their responses on survey submission.

When to use: You want respondents to be emailed a copy of their survey responses, and your survey includes a question asking their email address.

Directions

Step 1: Collect respondent email address on the survey

1. On your survey, create a Text Entry question that will collects the user’s email address. In the sidebar (question options) menu, make sure that Text Type is set to Single Line. Turn on the option Add Validation; then in the dropdown box that appears, choose Content Type. Under Content Type, click Email Address. (This will check that the text entered in the box matches the pattern of a valid email address.)

   

   If you are using Text Entry "Form" question type (which has multiple text boxes in a single question), click the link "Click here to edit form fields", which appears below the last text box.

   

   This will allow you to set the validation type for each box individually. Set the validation type for any boxes that will contain email addresses to Valid Email Address. When finished, click "Back to preview mode" to save your changes.

   

Step 2: Set up email triggers

1. In the left navigation menu, click Survey Options > Post-Survey. Locate Manage Email Triggers, then click Edit Triggers.

   

2. In the Triggers window, click Add Another Trigger.

   1. In the Message area, click on the “{a}” icon to open the Piped Text menu. Mouseover the “Survey Question” menu item, then find the question on your survey that collects the email address. Mouse over that question, and click on the menu item that is below Question Text. (The actual text in the menu will match the prompt for the email question item.)

      

      This should generate a chunk of text in the Message box that begins with a dollar sign, followed by what looks like a file path inside of curly braces:

      

      The part inside the curly braces between q:// and /ChoiceTextEntryValue will be different for every user and for every survey. That part represents the question's internal ID number, which is specific to each individual survey. For this reason, you must use the Insert Piped Text menu (rather than copy/paste from this tutorial) to get this string.

   2. Cut and paste the piped text chunk into the To Email Address field.
   3. If you want respondents to see their full survey responses: Make sure the box next to Include Response Report is checked.
      If you simply want to send respondents a confirmation email that their responses were received: uncheck the box next to Include Response Report.

   4. You do not need to enter anything in the message text area, but it may be helpful to respondents if you remind them where these survey responses came from, and (if applicable) what follow-up steps they should expect.

      

3. When finished, click Save Triggers.

Note: The response report emailed to the respondent includes "invisible" questions, such as Timer and Meta Info questions. For "check-all-that-apply" questions, it lists only the answer choices that the user selected.

Step 3: Test to confirm that the email trigger works as expected

You have now set up email triggers for respondents. You can verify that they are working properly by going to the Survey Preview and completing the survey using your own email address in your email question. If you find an error or want to change something about the email trigger, return to Survey Options > Post-Survey: Manage Email Triggers section to edit the existing distribution.

We recommend that you test your email triggers with and without the "Include Response Report" option, so that you can see what your survey respondents will see. The information contained in the "Include Response Report" includes quite a bit of detail, and may surprise respondents if they are not expecting to see it.