Scheduling survey respondants

Question

We use sawtooth to qualify consumers for consumer testing. In order to schedule qualified consumers, we ask them their top three preferred seating times and then manually create a schedule. Is it possible to do this automatically? I know I could set a quota for each time slot with the number of seats available, but I don't want to disqualify consumers just because they picked a timeslot that had already filled up, especially if they are able to come at a different time. Does anyone know a way to create a limit for each time slot (ex: 15 people), check when a consumer selects a timeslot if there are seats left, and if not, prompt the user to select another timeslot? It would also be helpful to have an option the consumer could select if they could not make any of the timeslots which would remove them from all previous quotas. Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi,

You can create a constructed list and remove the timeslot if its QUOTACELLREMAINING is 0.

Regards,
Saurabh

Comments

And you just need to decide on a sequential allocation within the quota or a randomised selection. This can be set under the advanced tab of the quota question.

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What would be an example of the full code used to create this constructed list? I understand that I need to use the quotacellremaining function, but I'm having trouble combining it with the remove function. Whenever I try to write an if/then statement I get error messages about my formatting.

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This should help get you started ...

Pop the Perl script below into a constructed list.

Note: I have assumed you have 10 timeslots and your quota question is called QTTimeslots. The TimeslotsList has all your timeslots defined.

Begin Unverified Perl

 my $i=1;

 for($i=1; $i<=10; $i++)
  {
   if (ISQUOTACELLOPEN("QTTimeslots",$i)==1)
    {  
     ADD("TimeslotsList",$i);
    }  
  }

End Unverified

This constructed list will capture all open timeslots. You could display this constructed list to a respondent in a select question and say something like "Below are the available times for the consumer testing. Please select ONE that best suits you." You may also want to include a "None of these are suitable" code and terminate respondents who answer to this code.

You quota question controlling the timeslot allocation can be defined based on this select question.

So this solution caters for all your needs where ...

1/ It ONLY displays available timeslots
2/ It asks the respondent to select ONE suitable timeslot
3/ Allows respondents to terminate if no available timeslot is available
4/ Automatically updates the timeslot quota.

Good luck.