I added a survey to our home page. I changed the button for the whole class to be able to view results and it is not working. I updated the survey after I made the change, but that did not make the "view survey results" available to my classmates. What do I do?
Sue Miller

You have to first participate in the survey by submitting an answer, then you can view the survey results.

Correct. Classmates cannot view collective results until first taking the survey themselves. The theory behind that being that seeing everyone else's collective results in advance could taint their answers.

Brad Switzer wrote:

Does that mean when someone clicks the survey and hasn't taken it, that they cannot see that anyone else has taken it? Could this leave the impression that no one is taking the survey? I've only had 14 people take my survey. I thought alot more would take it. But if they can't see that the survey has been taken by other people, they may be hesitant to take it themselves.

What would you recommend to solve this?

We could put a statement above the survey like:

"X number of people have completed this survey so far."

but when the numer is zero, or very low in the early stages, I think that could also cause the same impact that you're describing.

Brad Switzer wrote:

That may be better than having them think no one took it. Although, I think the option I suggested earlier would be best - to give everyone the option to display their name with their answers or not.

*sigh* Am I up to THREE pure Canadian Maple Syrups now? lol I can throw in a few Canadian brewskis! *hint*hint* lol

We're going to allow people to display their answers (assumming the admin has already allowed the answers to be public).

But as to the other question, if we showed the # of survey participants, every new survey would start with zero. So you would see "Zero people have taken this survey to date." If you're worried about people not taking the survey because they think nobody else is taking the survey............aren't we really much better off not showing a number at all, than showing 0 or a low number and totally proving that people aren't taking the survey?

-- Devil's Advocate

Brad Switzer wrote:

Ahhh, OK, so then just give the option for the person to display their their answers or not.

Brad Switzer wrote:

But once they do vote they can see the results (if that option is chosen by the admin) and go back and change their answer... for somethings like trying to pick a date for something this is a good idea. Let's say there are 3 dates in contention and 2 are clear front runners, people who chose the third can see the date they like is being overrun and pick one of the two with more votes.