How to randomize two surveys

Question

I have a project made of two similar but separate surveys that I want to administer to an equal number of people. Is there a way to combine them in one single survey and randomize them so that each one gets administered to half of the participants?

ps. I have already looked at the Randomization infopage but that hasn't completely cleared my doubts, since what I want to do is to randomize not just stimuli within a question but also the questions themselves as well as the pages (basically have two different surveys, one for each group).

Answer 1

I strongly recommend to randomize only the treatment (within a single questionnaire): Randomization

You may also randomize questionnaires, but read the limitations carefully!

Comments

Thank you!

I know that it is recommended to use one single questionnaire. My problem is also that I am afraid of messing up the code and therefore ending up without the required number of questions. What are the main drawbacks of using two different questionnaires?

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The main drawback is that you may end up with groups of different size, if many respondents drop out. Further drawbacks are that the random group is stored as text variable (needs recoding) and that you mess the experiment up easier (!) because you may change something in one questionnaire (e.g., during pretest) that you do not change in the other one.