Radomizatition of questions within a blocks

Question

I designed a survey including 70 different stimuli. After each text stimuli three questions follow each stimuli (in the same order). I will call this combination of text stimuli and three questions in the same order "collection". Furthermore I would like to have ten experimental groups each answering seven collections. (Thus my 70 in total with 10 participants). The seven collections are shown on the same page.

What I already managed to do is to randomize the participants into my 10 groups, and I show them seven collections already on a page.
However, I would like to avoid any order effect of my collections.

Currently, Groups 1 gets collection 1-7, group 2 gets collection 8-14 and so on. What I would love to get is that group 1 gets collection 1-7 but the order for 1-7 is truly random. Is that somehow possible? I read everything I could find on randomization and rotation, but somehow I am stuck.

I am thankful for any tips or pointers!

Answer 1

The seven collections are shown on the same page.

Are you sure about that?

If you considered mutliple pages, the multi-level structure would be very helpful in your case. Give it a look. Don't worry, the rest of the randomization is the same.

What I already managed to do is to randomize the participants into my 10 groups

Please also consder the advantages and disadvantages of having 10 fixed groups v. randomly drawing 7 stimuli for each respondent. Both is possible, the second one is a bit easier to implement.

What I would love to get is that group 1 gets collection 1-7 but the order for 1-7 is truly random.

Well, that's easier than you might think. You already have one random generator, create another one for the first group (plus 6 others) that contains the values 1 to 7. Then tell the new random generator to draw 7 codes in each interview, and done is the rotation. How to to present your stimuli and questions in the random order? This manual should give you a start: Rotate Questions

As I said, randomly drawing 7 out of 70 stimuli would be easier, as you needed only one random generator for that.

Comments

Thank you so much for you support, I really appreciate it.
I found a solution that fits for me, and thought I share that, it might help some others.

Just to add more context, my 70 stimuli are the result of a fractional factorial model I designed in R, also the 7 collection in blocks came from my R code. Thus they are "fixed in SoSciSurvey" but random in general. I basically import the 70 Stimuli in 10 blocks with 7 collections each.
The first part of randomizing the participants in 10 blocks was very easy using the random generator and saves as RG01 with numbers from 1 to 10. Afterwards I wanted to shuffle the same 7 collections for each group around randomly. Mulit-level structure does not work for me (as far as I understand) as I deliberately want to give the participants a chance to see all 7 stimuli and all their answers and be able to go back and forth and change answers after seeing the different stimuli).

My simplified solution for this "shuffeling" of the question order I implemented as follows (probably not the easiset, and maybe not the nicest)....

$QuestionID = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]; //variable with levels 1 to 7
shuffle($QuestionID);  //shuffeling of the order of the questions
putList('IV01', $QuestionID);

if (value('RG01') == 1) //For the first group
 {
for($i=0; $i<7; $i++) {
$QuestionNumber = id('EV', $QuestionID[$i]);
question($QuestionNumber);
}

 
} elseif (value('RG01') == 2) /For the second group
{
for($i=0; $i<7; $i++) {
$QuestionNumber = id('EV', $QuestionID[$i]+7); //I need questions 8 to 14 here
question($QuestionNumber);
}
.... //doing that for each of my 10 groups


It does what I was intending to do. Maybe not in the nicest way, but maybe it helps others with similar issues!

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Thanks for sharing the result. Just relying on the question numbers (01 to 07 + group offset) is a nice simplification here. However, if you want a quick feedback regarding the code: Please note that the question order will change, if you have any question that requires being answered, and respondents do not answer the question. The page will then reload and reshuffle. If you wanted avoid this, change

$QuestionID = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]; //variable with levels 1 to 7
shuffle($QuestionID);  //shuffeling of the order of the questions
putList('IV01', $QuestionID);

to

if (!isset($QuestionID)) {
  $QuestionID = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]; //variable with levels 1 to 7
  shuffle($QuestionID);  //shuffeling of the order of the questions
  putList('IV01', $QuestionID);
  registerVariable($QuestionID);
}

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Thanks so much! I included that part!