Survey is not continuing, going back to previous days

Question

I am using soscisurvey for a two-week diary study. However my participants are reporting that after day 3 their previous responses are being displayed instead of the new day. My downloaded data is showing nothing after day 3 either. I am at a loss. It is a big survey (684 pages), could this be the issue? Participants receive an email with a unique link from the first day and I have told them to just keep using that link to continue. Could this be the issue?

The morning questions do not have placeholders for previous answers. All PHP code has been checked and is correct. Participants cannot go back to previous answers themselves and the diary is designed to keep moving forward through the days, no back-tracking. I am having trouble getting the pause to work but nothing in that should be sending participants backwards. Any suggestions appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

However my participants are reporting that after day 3 their previous responses are being displayed instead of the new day.

Sounds like you sent a reminder email (that contains the same URL like the original email) instead of a new mailing für the third day.

Please double-check the settings of the mail that has been sent on day three.

I am at a loss.

You shall always (!) do sufficient technical pretests before working with laborious designs.

Important: Please note that it is not useful to create one large survey for a diary study (see Multi-Wave Survey). If you do so (what I strongly discourage), make sure that the threshold for missing values (set in the questionnaire settings) is small enough so that the survey won't restart unintendedly.