Duplicate Protection (Limiting One User to One Response)
When running surveys, you often want to get as many responses as possible. But when a single person submits survey answers more than once, it may screw up your results.
That’s why SurveyGizmo offers a feature called Duplicate Protection. When you enable it, this tool limits an individual to one response. It works based on either the survey taker’s IP address or cookies on the survey taker’s machine.
Note: This feature must be implemented before launching a survey. Once in place, a user who tries to submit multiple responses will receive a message that the survey is full.
Select the Edit Survey > Advanced Options tab. Make sure the blue Advanced Options bar is open. The third option, Survey Duplicate Protection, has three radio buttons. By default, No Vote/Dupe Protection is selected.
If you select Protect Via IP, the survey will not accept multiple responses from the same IP address. If your respondents are primarily consumers, and you don’t anticipate they’ll be coming from the same IP address, you may wish to choose this method of duplicate protection.
But if you expect more than one respondent has the same IP address, a better option for you is to select Protect Via Cookie. A small cookie is placed on the end user’s computer, and the survey will recognize if the same machine tries to submit multiple responses and not allow it. Granted, this method isn’t foolproof, because some users regularly delete their cookies, but for many it is the better option.
11 Comments
Hi, Nita.
This is a suggestion/idea we have had before. Right now we accomplish this through our survey login feature. Perhaps we will implement this idea in the future.
Thanks for your question.
We have enabled dup protection for our survey. However, I am the survey adminstrator and need to enter numerous hard copy survey responses into this survey.
So, in essence, I need to enter multiple surveys from my one computer.
Thank you.
We have enabled dup protection for our survey. However, I am the survey administrator and need to enter numerous hard copy survey responses into this survey.
So, in essence, I need to enter multiple surveys from my one computer.
Thank you.
This comment has been responded to in our forum post. The url is: http://www.surveygizmo.com/forum/?forum=3&topic=1013&page=1&post=3838#p3838
Why is de-duping not in the $19.95 plan? I just switched from another survey provider where it was included in the $19.95 price. I guess I made a wrong assumption, but is there a plan for a minimal feature at the personal level or will everything be stuck at the $49 level?
I can work around the limitation with some back-end programming, my team would simply send me back to the previous provider. Any constructive suggestions would help. Thx.
Hi, dtk.
Thanks for taking time to give us your comment.
Yes, we reserve our higher-level features for the Pro and higher level accounts. As the name implies, we see the Pro features as what professionals will need. De-duping by IP is something professional businesses may need.
The Personal account level is not really intended for professional business use. De-duping by IP is probably not what a casual survey will need.
BTW, what survey provider did you switch from? We would like to see who is providing de-dupe by IP at that price.
Thanks!
Hi,
I would like to start my survey and was thinking to upgrade to personal account. I find the de-dupe feature very important. I’m very surprised that it is not part of the personal account and the pro account is too expensive for my standard use.
do you have any solution for that or the de-dupe will only stay for pro users?
Hi liorlib,
That form of duplicate response protection will likely stay as a Pro feature, but I’ll give you a couple ideas.
1) Just upgrade from Personal to Pro for the month you need that feature then drop back down to Personal.
2) You could use email invites (available at the Personal plan) to get your survey in to their hands and use the option to tie the survey link to their response data. This would not prevent duplicate submissions but would make very, very unlikely that someone would be able to enter duplicates.
Take care,
Scott
How do I password protect a survey?
Hi Darren,
Go to the edit survey tab–> click on add action–> then under “Actions that can be placed on any page” click the bubble that says “Survey Login (Password Protection)”
Scroll down to the bottom drop down menu and select where you would like to put the password protection action in your survey.
Save Changes.
Then, you should be all set. Hope this helps!
Dane
Can we have set a field as a primary key and hence they won’t be able to submit duplicate copies?