Redirecting back to SoSciSurvey to complete survey (Cyberball)

Question

Hello everyone,

for our study we want our participants to do "survey - Cyberball - and back to the survey".

Redirecting to Cyberball and the Cyberball task itself are working fine. For the sake of completeness, here's the PHP code:

redirect('[THE CYBERBALL LINK]/?i=CASE_ID&p=%counter%', true);

In Cyberball, you can configure the post experiment URL, for which we used the Survey URL of course (the page coming after the Cyberball task, to be more precise, though I don't know if that matters):

https://www.soscisurvey.de/[OUR PROJECT]/?i=CASE_ID&p=%counter%

Now when testing out the survey, we get the following message

"Interview cannot be continued
The data entered so far could not be loaded. Your questionnaire may have been deleted - or the completed questionnaires may have been picked up and deleted in the meantime.
Unfortunately it is not possible to continue this survey."

Other threads on here suggest %caseToken%, which we have tried (just imagine "?i=CASE_ID&p=%counter%" replaced with %caseToken%), but it didn't work. What did we do wrong?

?i=CASE_ID&p=%counter% is a suggestion by ChatGPT. Well, at least we are going into the right direction with that (it seems), as the %caseToken% attempt just left us with the "Interview unavailable" message.

It looks like we have to do some small corrections, so that "the data entered so far" will be loaded, and so that the survey can be continued.

We would be grateful for help! Greetings from Germany

Answer 1

In my opinion, already the redirect won't work:

redirect('[THE CYBERBALL LINK]/?i=CASE_ID&p=%counter%', true);

You'll need the case token to continue, but the term CASE_ID has no meaning to SoSci Survey. Try this one, please:

redirect('[THE CYBERBALL LINK]/?i=%caseToken%&p=%counter%', true);

Please check the Cyberball platform regarding the i-Parameter ... does it arrive? And if yes, please check the address bar: what URL does it show when SoSci Survey shows "the survey can be continued"?

Comments

Hi, thank you! I've changed the redirect. Cyberball seems to pick up the i-Parameter - it's whatever follows  "?i=", correct? After a string of numbers + letters, there's also "&p=%counter%" at the end without anything else. It should be this way for the &counter&, right?

So, the URL when clicking the Post Experiment URL in Cyberball says:
https://www.soscisurvey.de/[OUR PROJECT]/?i=%caseToken%&p=%counter%

The i-Parameter isn't there, unfortunately  ...

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> After a string of numbers + letters, there's also "&p=%counter%" at the end without anything else. It should be this way for the &counter&, right?

SoSci Survey has no counters, so ... if you don't know what the %counter% is for, remove it ;)

redirect('[THE CYBERBALL LINK]/?i=%caseToken%', true);

> Cyberball seems to pick up the i-Parameter

Fine. Now make sure that it uses this parameter in the link back to SoSci Survey. Somethink like (I have no idea of the Cyberball redirection feature):

[SOSCI_URL]?i=[TOKEN]

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The i-Parameter changes with every run, as I imagine it would with every participants ... For example, one time it's "?i=UPO6OXLBMZDE", next time it's "?i=I9R32A6IFUGW"

I can't just copy and paste one of them into the Post Experiment URL in Cyberball ....... right?
Edited to add: I can only give one Post Experiment URL in the Cyberball Configurations

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The point is that the token identifies the case in the dataset. This is the information that SoSci Survey needs to return to the questionnaire. This is why the external page must receive the token, and hand it back in the return link.

>  I can only give one Post Experiment URL in the Cyberball Configurations

Maybe that supports variable parameters. I'm afraid, that is a question to ask the Cyberball support.

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Oh I was overthinking then haha! Thank you so much, it worked!! :)

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Oh no, sorry to annoy again. I don't know what happened - when I tried it the first time, it worked just fine. Now I tried it again and for some reason, when I get back to SoSciSurvey after Cyberball, the whole questionnaire is being skipped and I simply get the Thank You Message. Why's that and how to fix that? I'm kindly asking for help again ... :-)

Edited to add: So, the issue is that the Token indeed gets "personalized" so to speak, that's what I meant in a previous comment of mine. So if I test the whole survey and fill out the questions post-Cyberball (which works fine), and then do another testing round of the whole survey, I don't get the chance to do the questions post-Cyberball, as they have been completed (for the specific Token) before.

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> the issue is that the Token indeed gets "personalized" so to speak

Yes, we agree on that :)

The two steps are:

1. SoSci Survey tells Cyberball: Hey, take this (CASE-specific) token, it defines my case

And - by the way - you should also hand the CASE ID, so you can match the data in the end:

redirect('[THE CYBERBALL LINK]/?i=%caseToken%&id=%caseNumber%', true);

2. Cyberballs tells SoSci Survey: Hey, we're done, here's the (CASE-specific) token back, so you can just continue where you stopped, before

Now, it's you job to tell Cyberball to hand back the personalized token in the second step. You cannot use a token for a CASE that has been completed before, or you will see only the "thanks you are done", you need to hand back the token for the right case. That's a new one for each respondent.

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Unfortunately, the manual for Cyberball doesn't cover how to do that, so my group and I will have to find another way to embed the Cyberball portion into our survey (maybe as an extra link). Thank you for all the help, though.

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A way that worked quite fine in other designs was to open the extern website in a new browser tab. You just have to explain respondents to close the tab when they're done.