how to shuffle items over multiple questions?

Question

There´s three versions of the survey that need to be answered from three random groups of participants, each version is one scale rating question that contains lots of items(more than 20), and the order of the items should be shuffled so that the participants won´t figure out what the survey is testing exactly.

How do I do that?

I tried to use the random generator to send participant randomly to one of the questions, but how to shuffle the items of the questions using php codes?

Answer 1

the order of the items should be shuffled so that the participants won´t figure out what the survey is testing exactly.

Really ... you can do shuffling to avoid order effects. But don't try and spoof your respondents. If they can read, they will either understand what you're asking for or they won't. But this will not depend on the item order, but on their previous knowledge.

I tried to use the random generator to send participant randomly to one of the questions

This is what I would strongly recommend, yes.

And for the item rotation (please think twice, if it wasn't better to mix the order manually, but keep it the same for all respondents) just go into the question settings, and then Detail Settings -> Item Settings and for Items' order choose "Shuffle/rotate randomly".

Comments

thanks! I think you´re right. Probably better to have the same order for all the participants.

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also, how to show e.g. three/four items at a time on each page?
This is the random generator page:
if (value('RG01') == 1) {
    question('SR01');
 } elseif (value('RG01') == 2) {
    question('SR02');
 } else {
    question('SR03');
 }

so for each of these questions, there´s lots of items in them, and they should not be shown all on the same page

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okay, I managed it, it doesn´t look beautiful, but it worked!
so I have this for every questions,
if (value('RG01') == 1) {
    if (!isset($itemsSR01)) {
       $itemsSR01 = getItems('SR01','all');
    // devide the list into lists of 3 items
    $itemsSR01 = array_chunk($itemsSR01, 3);
    registerVariable('itemsSR01');
    }
    $i = loopPage(count($itemsSR01));
    question('SR01',$itemsSR01[$i]);