Closed-ended surveys leave up to 60% of possible answers out of the results. Why? Survey participants know more about what they want than we do. pairLab lets them suggest ideas we didn't consider. These suggestions can be fed back into the survey for testing so we can capture the entire landscape of ideas.
Here's how to manage your suggestions.
Watch for an Email Notification
You get an email when your participants make a suggestion. The email's subject is "New idea suggestion" and it contains a link that leads back to your expairiment's survey.
Are you not receiving email notifications? Check your spam folder in case they are being quarantined.
Review Your Suggestions
Suggestions are stored in "Suggestions Waiting in Queue." There you will see each idea and the operations you need to manage them.
Suggestions are not available to participants. You must manually approve ideas for them to be available in your survey. Here are the operations you can use:
- Edit -- Click the pencil to change the idea's text or status. In the dialog box that appears, make it active by changing its status to approved.
- Delete -- Click the trash can to remove an individual idea from the queue. You cannot undelete an idea.
- Approve or Delete multiple ideas -- Select multiple ideas using the checkbox next to each one. Click the Approve Selected Ideas button to make them available to participants or click the Delete Selected Ideas button to remove them from the queue. You cannot undelete ideas.
Best Practices
Not every suggestion is an idea, but many non-ideas can be useful. You may find that comments from survey participants provide new insights.
Are you seeing suggested ideas that are similar to ones in your survey? This could mean:
- The participant wanted to see an idea that hasn't yet appeared in the survey
- Your ideas are accurate but the labels you assigned them don't match the vocabulary your participants use
Considering this last case, we often use jargon or insider language for things we know well. Our customers may know them by different names, and using language they understand will produce better results. If you find that participants use a synonym for an active idea, close your survey and create a new one with labels that better matche your participants' understanding.