Market and language questions per project type

Multi-country surveys ask for the country and the language early on, and SurveyTester uses those questions to tell markets and languages apart in test runs, issues and filters. If your surveys always use the same question names for them, you no longer assign the questions in every project: name them once for the whole project type.

Where to set it

Open Administration → Project Types and the new area Market and Language Questions. For each project type you enter one or more question names for the market and one or more for the language. Upper and lower case do not matter.

What happens in a project

As long as a project of that type has no market or language question of its own, the first page detected during a test run whose name matches one of the entries becomes the project's market or language question:

• its answer categories become the project's markets;
• for the language question they are matched to the project's languages by their labels.

A question you assigned yourself in the project is never overwritten. Leave a list empty to go on managing markets and languages in each project individually, as described in Adding multiple markets and Adding multiple languages.

Market from a region question

Many single-country surveys never ask for the country, but they do ask for the region: "In which federal state do you live?" with Vienna, Styria, Tyrol and so on. SurveyTester recognises such a list by its answers alone, no matter which interview language you test - an English survey that still lists "Niedersachsen" works too. When a test run without a market passes such a question, the run gets the market of that country:

• if the project has no markets yet, SurveyTester creates one with the English country name, for example Austria;
• if the project already has a market for that country, that market is used;
• if the project has other markets, or a market question, nothing changes.

Later questions that need the country, such as a postal code, then get a valid answer for it. Regions of about 70 countries are known, from German states and Swiss cantons to US states.

Market from the survey link

Many entry links already carry the respondent's locale, for example ...&ci=en-gb&... on a panel screener or lang=de_AT on a survey link. When a test run without a market starts from such a link, and the project has no market question, SurveyTester reads the country from that locale and assigns the market the same way as for a region question: an existing market for that country is reused, a project without markets gets one created, and a project with other markets is left alone. Only a value that is a complete language tag with a country counts, and only when the link names exactly one country - a bare lang=en or two different locales change nothing. Because this happens when the first page is read, even a postal code on that page gets a valid answer.

Step by step

1. In Project Types, open the type your multi-country projects use and enter the question names, for example country and language.
2. Create a project of that type and run a first test run through the screener.
3. Open the project details: the market question and its markets are filled in; the languages that match the answer labels are assigned.
4. Correct by hand where needed - your choice stays.

Key takeaway

One setting per project type replaces the same assignment in every project: markets and languages fill themselves from the first test run.