Change ranges and number of groups for quota after survey launch

Question

I am currently running a survey that has three cohorts by age.

40% 18-35
40% 36-64
20% 65+.

We have been relatively unsuccessful with one age group (65+)and would like to change the cohorts to four groups:
30% 18-30
30% 31-50
30% 51-60
10% 61+

Is there a way to do that won't delete respondents or mess with the data I have already collected? What's the best way to do this? Thanks!

Comments

Changing quota targets for existing quotas via the admin module is easy during field. That's the simple task.

When you need to introduce new quotas or modify old ones part way through field, you have a bigger problem, especially when quotas are very strict or there are issues like incentives involved.

I tend to use a manual approach where I look at the quotas achieved so far and remove them from my targets (e.g. if you were chasing n=80 61+ year olds and you already have 30, you know you need 50 more). So you setup your new quota question with your new definitions and targets. All pre-exisiting completed surveys will have no data captured for this new quota question. They will not be affected by this new quota question. Only future completed surveys will have data populated into this new quota question.

So you basically have the old quota plus the new quota with the new quota  controlling the new definitions. You may need to tweak the targets on the old quotas, depending on your changes? You can actually make their targets high so no respondents will ever quota fail on the old quota question anymore.

In saying all the above, I'm sure some programmers out there have some "wizz-bang" automatic method that creates a new quota question and recodes data into it for the existing completed surveys. I personally haven't gone to that extent, as the manual approach did the job and it wasn't time consuming at all. You can also recode any of the quota questions after field.

Let's see what others have to say.

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I've done the exact same thing Paul has described on many occasions.  While it may be more difficult 'at a glance' to see your true current counts it will control what you want and avoid getting more in a group than you want.

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This works, thank you so much!

Answer 1

So you went with the new quota approach removing the old counts?

Comments

Yes, I went with the new quota approach. Thanks again for your help.