Social science researchers collect much of their data through online surveys. In many cases, they offer incentives to the participants. These incentives can take the form of lotteries for more valuable prices or individual gift card codes. We are doing the latter in our studies here at CEPA Labs at Stanford. Specifically, our survey participants receive a gift card code from Amazon.
However, sending these gift card codes to respondents is challenging. In Qualtrics, our online survey platform, we can embed a code for each potential respondent, and then trigger an email with the code attached after their survey is completed. While this is a very convenient feature, it has one substantial drawback. We need to purchase a code for each potential respondent up front, yet many participants may never answer. There is an option of waiting until the survey is closed and then purchasing the codes for all respondents together. However, respondents tend to become impatient if they do not receive their code in a timely manner and start reaching out to you and the IRB office. This creates administrative work and might reduce response rates if potential respondents can talk to each other about their experience.
var i;
var fib = []; //Initialize array!
fib[0] = 0;
fib[1] = 1;
for(i=2; i<=10; i++)
{
// Next fibonacci number = previous + one before previous
// Translated to JavaScript:
fib[i] = fib[i-2] + fib[i-1];
alert(fib[i]);
}However, sending these gift card codes to respondents is challenging. In Qualtrics, our online survey platform, we can embed a code for each potential respondent, and then trigger an email with the code attached after their survey is completed. While this is a very convenient feature, it has one substantial drawback. We need to purchase a code for each potential respondent up front, yet many participants may never answer. There is an option of waiting until the survey is closed and then purchasing the codes for all respondents together. However, respondents tend to become impatient if they do not receive their code in a timely manner and start reaching out to you and the IRB office. This creates administrative work and might reduce response rates if potential respondents can talk to each other about their experience.