I have lost the Back-Button... :( AND Return from link to Sawtooth-Survey

Question

Dear Sawtooth-Team,

When I started to design my journey I simply wanted to show a "Continue"-Button and we somehow removed the Back-Button. Now, we have decided that it was better to have a "go back to previous question"-option included (at best in German language "zurück"). However (and this is pretty stupid admittedly :)), we just do not know how to activate the Back-Button again. We would be very grateful for help.

Furthermore, we included a link to another survey with another software program. If this small survey is finished we would like to return to the sawtooth survey automatically by perhaps having some kind of "return link" or anything similar. Is that possible? If yes, how?

Thank you so much for your help in advance.

Phil

PS: I am using SSI WEB7.

Answer 1

Regarding the link query ...

You started in a Sawtooth survey and I assume you have linked to another survey via a Terminate question (within the Sawtooth survey). At this point, you should have exited the Sawtooth survey as an incomplete status and inserted the url to where you need to skip to (the other survey/software).

When you pass fields/data (like an ID or password), the other software will have it's own way of handling that? This I can't help you with as it varies from one software package to the next.

The other software I assume has a feature that enables you to return to the Sawtooth survey? You need to use the same survey link that got you into the Sawtooth survey to begin with but include the additional feature "sys_skipto" which allows you to define the returning question in the Sawtooth survey. The example below shows the survey returning to Q11 in the tep1 survey.

http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/gonzo/cgi-bin/ciwweb.pl?studyname=tep1&panelid=7362836&sys_skipto=Q11

You can check the Sawtooth help which has a solid explanation of "Composing Terminate/Link Questions".

Regarding the back/previous button ...

This is handled under the Survey Settings (the screw driver icon) under the General Format tab. You will see Navigation Button options. You can select Graphical or Text. For graphical, you select the path of the Submit and Previous buttons but for the Previous button you need to select the tick box to indicate you want it activated, otherwise it won't be displayed. For text, the same rules apply except you simply enter the text to display rather than selecting graphical files. Did you select the tick box because this will stop the previous button from displaying?

Good luck, hope this gets you sorted out.

Comments

Hi Paul, thank you so much for your answer which has helped me a lot. Regarding the back/previous button there is no longer a problem at all. Thank you once again! Regarding the link querry: Unfortunately we do not work with the Terminate/Link Question. Instead we have included the following instruction in the CBC-Task footer: "If you want to inform yourself about the special components please follow this link by clicking "here"." In case that the respondent clicks "here" he will be guided to the explanation provided by the second software program we use (I guess this is not the smartest solution but rather circumstantial). Is it in this particular context possible to return to where the Sawtooth-Survey was left, too, or would you recommend to have the link-opened in a new window (which is the current way I tried to solve my problem). Thank you very much once again!

---

You can use either method of opening a new window (by using the PopUp function for example - see Sawtooth help) or just continuing on as you have decided to do. The other software (I don't know what this is) will need a feature like Sawtooth (where you can skip back to the Sawtooth survey). As mentioned in my earlier reply, you can use the "sys_skipto" feature in the original survey link that returns you to the Sawtooth survey. Specify the question where you want it to go back to.

There must be a method of some sort in the other software that enables you to link back.

One option I pop into my terminate questions in Sawtooth (and you could possibly use something like this) is as follows ...

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="10; url=http://www.google.com">

This code will have a 10 second delay before skipping automatically to the url specified (in this example the google home page).