With Rational Survey, you now have the option of changing the survey width to a specific size in pixels.  This feature is great for users looking to accommodate questionnaires with extra lengthy questions or want to fit their survey on  a page or sidebar with limited space.

To change the survey width, go to the survey settings page and open the presentation tab.  Now slide the questionnaire width slider to your desired dimension.

After saving, your survey will be sized accordingly.

Now let your creative survey genius run wild by looking for new places to set your questionnaires.

With Rational Survey, you now have the ability to randomize the position of multiple choice question answer choices in order to improve the integrity of collected survey responses.  The new feature also enables you to selectively pin individual answer choices to preserve their display order.

To get started with answer choice randomization:

Open the question configuration menu by double clicking an existing question within the questionnaire builder or click the “Plus” icon to add a new question.  Now set the “Randomize Answers” option to “Yes”.

A new column of shuffle icons will appear to the right of the existing answer choice table options.

To selectively pin an individual answer choice, click the shuffle icon (Once toggled, it will appear as a pin).

Now click “Save” to confirm the changes or to add your new question to the questionnaire.

Unpinned answer choices will now be randomly shuffled.

With Rational Survey, you now have the ability to set a global survey password that will limit access to those with the given password. It’s also worth mentioning that the survey password will override individual passwords for participants that were uploaded via CSV when assigning survey participants for controlled studies.

To enable survey passwords:

Go to the survey settings page from the configuration step.

Open the advanced tab and set the “Require Responder Login” option to “Yes”.

Check the “Password” checkbox option to enable passwords.

Now enter a global survey password into the “Survey Password” field. Note: If you would like to use unique passwords for individual participants, then leave this particular field blank. You must then make sure to assign passwords to your participants in the responders tab.

Lastly, remember to save your survey settings for the changes and new password to take effect.

Now participants will be required to provide a password to continue to the questionnaire section of the survey.

It’s very disappointing to have your survey participants exit on the 4th page of a modest 5 page survey.  So how can you make them stay?  Simple, just give them an easy way of measuring their progress so they can get an internal estimate of the remaining time.

Here’s where the progress bar comes in.  Adding a progress bar will give your participants the assurance they need to continue on to the next page without worrying about the length of the survey.  This is especially useful for lowering participant fatigue on longer surveys with multiple pages.

To enable progress bars in your survey, go to the survey settings page and open the presentation tab.  Now set the “Progress Bar” option to “Yes”.

You can even change the color of the progress bar to one of your choosing (the default color is blue).  After enabling the progress bar, click the “Progress Bar” color box to open a color picker and select a color of your choosing.

Now our survey participants can finally gauge their progress.

We also released a quick video tutorial that shows you how to enable the progress bars.