Quota Management is used to manage the number of participants taking surveys. This is important in cases when an incentive is offered, participants are purchased from a panel company, or to gain trust by reducing the number of requests to complete surveys, and/or asking fewer questions in your survey.
In Illume surveys, a Quota is a user defined category that is limited by the number of participants that have already submitted the survey. At runtime, the quotas are evaluated for each participant to determine if the participant is part of the quota or if the quota limit has been reached. In addition to the quota limits, a quota can optionally have other criteria which are based on survey questions.
A very simple example of Quota Management is to limit the number of participants that are to take a survey. After the limit has been met, other participants can be immediately auto-submitted and issued a message saying the quota has been met. Criteria can also be added to the quota to form another variation of this example so that the survey is limited by females between the ages of 18 and 30.
A survey can have one or more Quotas and each Quota must be contained within a Quota Group Object. The placement of the Quota Group Object determines when the quotas contained within the object are evaluated. The Quota Group Object is normally placed near the beginning of the survey, usually after a set of screening questions. There are additional rules that apply to all quotas specified in this Quota Group Object that can be optionally specified that affect the quota evaluation and determine whether a participant is assigned to the quota or not.
The first step in defining a quota is to create the Quota Group Object. Below are the general steps, with subsequent pages drilling down into the Auto-Suspend Options, Quota Minimumsm and Quota Maximums.
In the Illume Survey Designer go to Add/Quota
Give the Quota Group Object a Unique name and Description. The Quota Description will be visible in the Data Manager.
The Auto-Suspend Options are used to suspend the survey when one or more of the quotas are filled. Users select one of the following options per Quota Group Object:
NOTE: Testing the Auto-Suspend Options is only possible in a published version of the survey using non-test participants.
The Quota Minimums ensure that participants meet a minimum set of the created quotas to either continue with the survey or for their data to be counted in any quota limits. Checking the box under “Quota Minimums” will activate the Quota Minimums limit. Once checked, users may use the drop-down box to select the minimum number of quotas that must be met before the participant may continue.
Users may then select what should happen if the participant does not meet this minimum limit. The choices are:
The Quota Maximum limits the number of quotas in which a participant can be included. If this number is exceeded then only the maximum number of quotas specified will be counted using a quota selection rule.. Checking the box under “Quota Maximums” will activate the Quota Maximums limit. Once checked, users may use the drop-down box to select from the Maximum number of quotas the participant may meet. The maximum number is defined by the number of active quotas created in the Quotas tab.
After evaluating the quota conditions, if the number of quotas for which a participant qualifies exceeds the maximum number of quotas, only the maximum number of quotas will be selected. The quotas will be selected based on priority, which is determined according to the following rules:
The Quotas tab is utilized to add each quota to be evaluated:
NOTE: Expressions can be grouped using AND, OR, or a Custom parenthesized expression using both AND and OR (e.g. (A and B) or (C and D)).
Click OK when you have finished adding conditions. Repeat if you wish to have multiple Quotas in this Quota Group Object
NOTE: The ordering of quotas may be used to determine priority if a maximum number of quotas is specified (see below) and the quota selection rule is determined by the order in the list. The ordering of the quotas can be changed by selecting a quota and dragging it up or down in the list.
There is a tab in the Data Manager at the survey level that will display the Quota Group Objects and Quotas created in a survey. This display shows the names of the Quota Group and Quota Objects as well as the Quota Description, Quota Condition, the number of participants meeting the Quota condition (Current), the specified quota limit (Limit), and the percentage full (Current divided by Limit).
Quota statistics for test data can be viewed by clicking the Show Test Data Quotas button. After showing the Test Data Quota statistics, they can be hidden by clicking the Hide Test Data Quotas button.