Qualtrics Tutorials: Sending Respondents a Copy of their Survey

Sometimes, your respondents may wish to have a copy of their survey responses. As the survey creator, there are two options you can use to make it easy for respondents to save a report of their responses.

When to use: After the user submits their responses, you want them to be redirected to a page with a summary report of their answers that they can print or save as a PDF.

This method changes the end-of-survey outcome so that instead of seeing a thank you message, the user is shown a report of their responses. This report can be printed or saved as a PDF. This can be used as an alternative to sending an email with the responses (method 2 below), or could be used in addition to emailing the responses.

Directions

1. Click Survey Options.

2. In the Survey Termination section, click the Show Response Summary option. Then click Save Changes.

   

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.

When to use: If your respondents may want a copy of their responses to your survey to be sent to their email address.

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.

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; then, under Validation Type, click Content Validation. Under Content Type, click Email Address. (This will ensure that the person enters 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. Click Tools > Triggers > Email 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 person 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 the Tools > Triggers > Email Triggers section to edit the existing distribution.