How to finish your survey🔗

To give participants a sense of closure at the end of your survey/experiment, it might help to:

  • Check that the progress bar is displaying as 100% at the end. If you have been using the public progress bar update program and if your increments are rounded to two decimal places, you might find that the final update doesn't quite reach 100%, so instead of using *program: update progress - public in the final progress bar update, you could simply write *progress: 100%.
  • If you direct people to other programs as part of your main survey program (e.g., if you direct them to a results program at the end of your survey program), remember that after they've completed that/those subprogram(s), they'll be directed back to the original/main program.
    • You might want to add a final "Finish" button at the very end of the survey, followed by some kind of closing statement, like: "Thanks again for your participation! Please email {your_email} with any questions. Feel free to close this tab now."
  • If you're giving people the option to either view their results straight after their survey completion or to have their results emailed to them, then keep in mind that those different ways of viewing results will have different implications for participants at the end of their result viewing.
    • If someone is viewing their results after being directed to the results subprogram (if you direct them there from the main program), then they will automatically finish the survey back in the main program, so your end/closing statements in the main program will be the last things they see before closing the tab.
    • If someone is viewing their results after clicking a results link that you emailed to them, they will be viewing the results program (with pre-loaded variables that you saved via their customized URL parameters) as a standalone program. If you want to direct them back to the main program for anything (e.g., if you want them to complete the survey again), then you'll need to include a line in the results program that specifically does this (e.g., *program: mainProgram) and you'll need to include an *if statement before it that guarantees that people are only given that option if they opt into a return to the main program somehow. The other thing to note is that, because they aren't going to be automatically directed to the end of the main program, if you want to have a final/closing statement for them to view prior to closing the tab, then you'll need to incorporate that into your results program. An example of how you could do this is below.

In the below example, sentResults is a variable that only gets set as part of the customized URL parameters that are included in an email to participants who opt into having their results sent to them. If someone doesn't opt into getting their results emailed to them, this variable won't exist. This means that you can include an *if statement checking for the existence of this variable if you'd like to include something in your results program that you only want emailed participants to see. In this case, emailed participants won't be automatically finishing in the original program, so there's a copy of the closing statement (from the main program) that is only presented if participants are viewing the results after being emailed the link.

*if: sentResults
	*button: Finish
	Thanks again for completing our study! Feel free to close this tab now.
	Please email {researcherEmail} if you have feedback or comments on this survey/study!

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