Multiple submissions by the same respondent

The distribution channel you select determines how many times a respondent can fill out a survey.

Email — send with the Agile Research email system

Agile Research provides a unique URL to each contact. With this unique URL, each contact can fill out the survey only once.

If you want to invite the same person multiple times for the same survey, see Inviting contacts more than once for the same survey.

See Sending email invitations via the Agile Research email system.

Email — send with your own email system

If you want to use your own email program, Agile Research will generate a generic link that you can send to your respondents. This link is not unique for each respondent.

As soon as a respondent starts filling out a survey, a cookie will be placed on their computers so the survey can only be filled out from that device once every 168 hours (12 hours in case of surveys based on our COVID templates). The respondent can still fill out the survey a second time from another computer, a smartphone, or a tablet.

To change this, go to your survey Settings, then select Options and change the number of hours mentioned next for Can answer again after:

Allow multiple submissions.

Then click Save to confirm your changes.

If you want to enable respondents to immediately fill out the survey again, see "Allow multiple submissions" below.

See Sending email invitations with your own platform.

Tip: If you reduce the time of life of the respondent cookie, this will not affect cookies already out there. Those cookies already have an expiration date. So those respondents will not be able to answer again until the cookie already on their device expires. The new hour setting only affects future respondents.

Say a survey has a respondent cookie setting of 168 hours (7 days). 100 respondents answer with that setting. Then they change it to 12 hours. The 100 respondents that answered still have a cookie for 7 days and will not be able to answer until the cookie expires. Unless 'allow multiple submissions' is turned on. When 'allow multiple submissions' is on, not only is the respondent cookie ignored, but also deleted. Also with that setting on, no cookie is placed at all. So if a survey goes from 'allow multiple submissions' to '12 hours', it will work directly, since there have not been any cookies placed yet.

Web

Through cookies, we keep track of the device that was used to fill out a survey. Because of this, respondents can only fill out a survey on a device once every 168 hours (12 hours in case of surveys based on our COVID templates), regardless of which option you select: Link / Social media, Embedded (iframe), or Pop-up / Pop-under.

To change the cookie settings, go to your survey Settings, then select Options and change the number of hours mentioned next for Can answer again after: Then click Save to confirm your changes.

If you want to enable respondents to immediately fill out the survey again, see "Allow multiple submissions" below.

See the following topics for additional information:

Paper — Contacts

Select this distribution channel to send your invitations via paper but if you still want your respondents to fill out the survey online. You can use contacts to keep track of who has already responded and who hasn't as well as to look at your contacts' individual responses. Since a unique URL is created per contact, the survey can only be filled out once via that URL.

If you want to enable respondents to immediately fill out the survey again, see "Allow multiple submissions" below.

See Sending out paper invitations.

Paper — Don't use contacts

If you do not use contacts to send your paper invitations, you will receive a generic URL that you can send to your respondents. A cookie will be placed on a respondent's computer as soon as they start filling out the survey. So the survey can only be filled out once every 168 hours per device (12 hours for surveys based on our COVID templates).

To change the cookie settings, go to your survey Settings, then select Options and change the number of hours mentioned next for Can answer again after: Then click Save to confirm your changes. Then click Save.

If you let your respondents fill out the survey on a paper version and you wish to register their responses in the tool yourself, you can use the link Manual input URL. This URL allows multiple submissions so you can automatically fill out the survey more than once from the same computer. No special changes are required.

See Sending out paper invitations.

Telephone

This distribution channel was designed with call centers in mind. That is why agents who fill out surveys for their respondents are able to fill them out multiple times.

See Conducting surveys by telephone.

Kiosk

Because multiple visitors have to be able to fill out your survey on an event, respondents will be able to fill out the survey more than once by default.

See Kiosk distribution channel.

SMS

Using this distribution channel, a unique link per contact will be sent via SMS. Because of this, respondents can fill out the survey only once.

If you want to enable respondents to immediately fill out the survey again, see "Allow multiple submissions" below.

See SMS.

Allow multiple submissions

For certain distribution channels, you can allow multiple submissions from the same computer. This is possible for the following channels: paper – Don't use contacts, via email – send with your own email system; and via web.

To change this, go to your survey Settings, then select Options and change the number of hours mentioned next for Can answer again after:

Allow multiple submissions.

Then click Save.

Checking this option will prevent a cookie from being placed on respondents' devices, thus enabling them to fill out the survey multiple times from the same device.