I resolved from writing my own suverys framework into using LimeSurvey which seemed to be the best freely available hosting. It is written in PHP and JQuery and requires a server for a host - which is something I could supply.
This solution was tested with:
- WampServer 2.2;
- LimeSurvey 1.9.2;
- Browser/OS:
- On Windows 7: Internet Explorer 9; FireFox 13; Google Chrome 20.0.1132.57 m.
Installing, configuring and start using LimeSurvey
I built it from scratch.Thus, for WAMP I used WampServer: http://www.wampserver.com/en/
Downloaded Livesurvey from here: http://www.limesurvey.org/en/stable-release
Unzipped, moved the limesurvey directory to the WampServer www directory.
Browsed to http://localhost/limesurvey . Continued with the installation from there.
When LimeSurvey is installed, login as an admin. The l/p values are stored in the config.php file in LimeSurveuy's root directory. The defaults are admin/password.
Now. Why are we here?
I would like LimeSurvey to
- Read the assignmentId parameter of the URL. This is a part of the URL added by Mechanical Turk to any HIT page it refers to.
- Store the assignmentId as one of the answers to the questionnaire. (for further inspection before I actually pay people).
- Refer workers who finished the questionnaire to a confirmation link, which adds them to the list of people I should (consider) paying to.
The Steps
1) Change LimeSurvey's Global Settings \ Security \ Filter HTML for XSS to No.
2) Create a new Survey, QuestionsGroup, Question. Go to the edit question screen. The question type should be set to "Short free text" (unless you need something different). Pick a Question Code now. It can be anything not used again in your survey. In the example below, the Question Code is 'assignmentId' (without the quotes of course).
3) Click on the Source button. This will disable rich-text editing, and will take anything you'd print in as
raw code to be added into the questionnaire.
4) After you clicked on the Source button, paste the following code:
<script type="text/javascript">
// Adapted by guy4261 from: http://papermashup.com/read-url-get-variables-withjavascript/
function getUrlVars() {
var vars = new Array();
var parts = window.location.href.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi,
function(m,key,value) {
vars[key] = value;
});
return vars;
}
//$(document).ready(function() {
$('#{SGQ}').val(getUrlVars()["assignmentId"]);
//});
</script>
<style type="text/css">
#question{assignmentId.qid}{
display: none;
}
</style>
5) Go to the Survey's Edit survey text elements page. Scroll down to the End URL field. Enter the following URL:
(For Debug:) http://www.google.com/search?q={assignmentId}
(For Release:) http://workersandbox.mturk.com/mturk/externalSubmit?finished=true&assignmentId={assignmentId}
Further Customization Notes
4.1) Note that you need a specific value. In my case it's assignmentId (assigned by Mechanical Turk); in a different system that could've been a completely different parameter(s).4.2) After the script tag is closed, comes the style tag. By choosing #question1 and making it invisible, we prevent the user from changing the assigned value. The original tutorials suggest hiding a question by tampering with the template.css file, but at least in Chrome this works just as well. However, the selector should be #questionQQ where QQ is the question ID. In the example shown here, while the SGQA (http://docs.limesurvey.org/SGQA+identifier) is 22456X1X1, the question's ID is simply 1. Supposedly, question codes can replace this values starting with LimeSurvey 1.92, but this is what I have installed and I just couldn't make it work.
5) In the End URL, use the macro {questionCode} (in our case: {assignmentId}) to include the collected assignmentId in the reference URL to Mechanical Turk's confirmation page. There is probably a nicer way to make it work with JavaScript auto-forwarding etc. but that's beyond the scope of this tutorial. This also means that the assignmentId is saved along with the survey's results. However, from what I understood, this is useful to avoid paying people who did not feel the questionnaire properly.
Explanations of the Solutions' Steps
4.1) You should be aware that LimeSurvey uses lots of JQuery, hence the $ selectors in this code.4.2) Note that in the original suggestions across the LimeSurvey forum, the original suggestion was to run
the code as part of a custom document.ready function.
4.3) The function that parses the URL variables can be replaced; I took this one by papermashup: http://papermashup.com/read-url-get-variables-withjavascript/
4.4) {SGQ} is a the LimeSurvey macro for the current question. $('#{SGQ}').val('FOO') simply populates the answer with FOO.
