Answered

Randomly ordered questions from different question groups

  • 2 March 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 434 views
S

Hey, I got really excited about using Typeform as the assessment tool for my education platform and I really want to get started business-wise however, I am running into issues setting up my form. I wish I could speak to a person in live chat but it requires a business plan. I am heavily considering upgrading to the business plan for this endeavor however, I am simply testing out Typeform with the free version to see if it fits my needs.

I have 96 questions intentionally in random order connected to 32 different skill categories (32 question groups). However, when I want to assign a question to a question group, it forces me to abandon the random order of my questions. For example, I want to score category 1 which has questions # 3, 12, and 72. How would I do this?

I want to create a social, emotional, and behavioral assessment. To ensure the validity of the responses it’s important that people taking the assessment cannot decipher what type of question they are answering (hence the random order). Another issue I am facing is that when questions are in a question group it displays the title of the question group (I want the titles to remain anonymous). Only after the user has completed the survey should they be able to see how well they scored in each of the 32 skill categories (question groups).

I am hoping someone can rescue me. Please help!

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Best answer by jeremielp 2 March 2023, 23:42

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5 replies

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @SELJapan Happy Thursday! Glad to hear you’re testing out Typeform, and welcome to the community!

It isn’t possible to randomize questions at this time, but would you be able to give each question group generic names? For example, “Question Set 1,” etc etc. 

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
J
Userlevel 5
Badge +5

@liz, what about:

  1. using the Create API to read the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/retrieve-form/
  1. Shuffle the questions using an external script?
  2. Update the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/update-form/

Would that work? Will this cause an issue in the user interface, or will the question stays in the original order?

S

Hi @SELJapan Happy Thursday! Glad to hear you’re testing out Typeform, and welcome to the community!

It isn’t possible to randomize questions at this time, but would you be able to give each question group generic names? For example, “Question Set 1,” etc etc. 

The issue with the generic names is when I want to show the results at the end of the assessment the scoring titles would also be generic. I want people to know how well they scored in each respective skill (question group). I am astonished that Typeform does not have this functionality built in.

S

@liz, what about:

  1. using the Create API to read the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/retrieve-form/
  1. Shuffle the questions using an external script?
  2. Update the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/update-form/

Would that work? Will this cause an issue in the user interface, or will the question stays in the original order?

@liz, what about:

  1. using the Create API to read the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/retrieve-form/
  1. Shuffle the questions using an external script?
  2. Update the form:
    https://www.typeform.com/developers/create/reference/update-form/

Would that work? Will this cause an issue in the user interface, or will the question stays in the original order?

Thank you so much for the possible solution! What type of external script would I have to make? I am a bit unfamiliar with making APIs but have the time to learn. I would love to continue to use Typeform however it is crucial that I can randomize the order of the questions or else I might have to use a different solution.

J
Userlevel 5
Badge +5

I unfortunately do not have time to elaborate more than the description, but any good developper should be able to do that. You need to do a script that update the form every 15 minutes for example. It won’t be randomize for every visitor, but shuffiling the questions every 15 minutes should be enough to remove any sorting bias. You can use any language, but the cheapest developpers would probably in Python or Node.JS.

There is an alternative that would allow to randomize the question order, using Javascript to create and logic rule in Typeform, but for N questions, it requires to create N hidden fields and N x N logic rules, so considering the high number of questions you have, i don’t think it will be that convenient and the form might be heavy to load for your users.

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