User guide

1 · Your account and your space

You sign up with a university address from an approved domain. An activation link arrives by email, you set a password there, and then you sign in.

1. Create your account — an independent space is created under your name or your lab’s. Create account
2. Open the activation link within 24 hours and set a password of at least 12 characters.
3. Turn on two-factor authentication from your account page — your account holds participant data. My account

Your space is fully isolated: nobody sees your surveys, responses or participants, and you see nobody else’s. A maximum number of surveys and members applies, set by the system administrator.

2 · Building the instrument

A survey is sections, and each section holds questions. It starts as a draft you can change freely until you publish.

1. Create a survey and choose its languages and group. Surveys
2. The editor is where sections and questions live. Twenty-nine types: text, choice (including ranking and image choice), scales (Likert, semantic differential, NPS, stars, slider), matrices (including dual-scale), numeric, date and time, and special ones (email, phone, URL, file upload, signature, geolocation, yes/no, consent).
3. A computed question takes its value from other answers, is never shown to the respondent, and still exports as its own column.
4. Translate the text into your second language on a side-by-side screen. then the Translation tab inside the survey

Every question has a Code — it is the column name in exports and the handle used by logic rules. Choose it carefully: changing it after responses arrive breaks whatever was built on it.

3 · Logic and flow

Who sees what, when, and in which order.

1. Conditions: show a question or section based on an earlier answer, or skip past it. Logic tab
2. Cross-question rules, such as “the percentages must total 100” — checked on the server at submission, with a message you write yourself.
3. Paging: everything on one page, one page per section, or one page per question — with a progress bar and a back button.
4. Randomisation: option or section order is shuffled from a seed fixed per respondent, so their order stays the same if they come back.
5. Print the logic file — one page listing every rule the instrument enforces, to attach to the paper.

4 · Publishing and distributing

Publishing freezes a version of the instrument. Responses are tied to the version answered, so later edits never corrupt what has already been collected.

1. Choose the access mode: an open public link · invitation and token only · a public link protected by a password. Settings tab
2. Publish, then copy the link. A short readable alias sits beside the permanent link — and the permanent one keeps working forever.
3. Add participants and send invitations in batches; the email templates are editable per survey. Invitations tab
4. Quotas: stop collecting at a given number, or at a number per answer combination (say 50 men and 50 women).
5. Preview the instrument exactly as a respondent sees it before you distribute, or print a paper copy.

The permanent survey link never changes once distributed. The short alias can be edited, and the old one keeps working.

5 · Collecting responses

Three ways into your dataset: the link, manual entry, and import.

1. Respondents can save and finish later through a link sent to them, so nothing typed is lost.
2. Paper forms are keyed in manually — the person entering them is recorded, and blanks are allowed on purpose. Manual entry tab
3. Or import a batch from CSV: the columns are question codes, and a dry run shows you what would happen before anything is saved.
4. Review responses row by row, or delete a selected set in one go.

A respondent’s network address is never stored — only its hash, and for one purpose: preventing duplicate submissions in open surveys, if you ask for it.

6 · Results and analysis

From frequencies to reliability coefficients, then to a file your statistics package opens.

1. The results screen: frequencies and charts per question, and means where they apply. Results tab
2. Scales: Cronbach’s alpha for each scale you define, with reverse coding set per item inside a matrix.
3. Subgroup analysis: filter responses by a given answer, and the filter carries through to every export link.
4. Data quality: straight-lining, per-question timings, and suspicious responses.
5. Export: CSV · Excel · «SPSS (.sav)» with its labels and measurement levels · Stata (.dta) · and the full study archive.
6. And print the results report as a ready page.

The SPSS file carries variable labels and measurement levels. Check the measurement level in the question editor before exporting — “nominal” on an ordinal scale will block means in your package.

7 · Team and transfer

If you work with colleagues, or move an instrument to another study.

1. Add members to your space with defined roles; each member gets what their role allows. Team members
2. Each survey also has its own access list, opened to whoever you choose across five separate abilities (view · edit · responses · export · participants).
3. The item library: export a question or a section and import it into another instrument.
4. Import from LimeSurvey in .lss format, or export to it. Import tab
5. The study archive: structure and responses in a single file — to keep with the paper, or to move to another installation.

8 · Privacy and your responsibility

What the system stores, and what stays yours.

1. Set a retention period for each survey’s responses — when it lapses they are deleted automatically, along with their files.
2. Every invitation carries an opt-out link, and the opt-out applies platform-wide, not only to your survey.
3. Read exactly what is stored. Privacy policy

You — not the platform — are the responsible researcher: for participant consent, and for your institution’s ethics approval where required. Export your own copy of the data; do not rely on backups alone.