Nfield is a powerful cloud-based platform that’s specifically designed for conducting Online and CAPI surveys. Its ability to support high respondent numbers and complexity makes it an invaluable tool for professional market researchers in every field, whether working for businesses, authorities or in academia, to name just three examples.

Nfield functionality: what you can do

Nfield provides comprehensive, end-to-end solutions, all the way from survey design to data collection and review. It facilitates fast, efficient working, while being highly customizable to individual requirements. And, very importantly, it’s easy-to-use.

Let’s take a look at the range of functionality Nfield offers:

Survey design

Nfield’s user-friendly interface brings simplicity to designing complex surveys. It supports a wide range of question types to cater to every need, including multiple choice, rating scales, grids, and open-ended. Nfield also enables easy handling of complex survey logic by providing features such as skip patterns and branching.

Responsive design, which is all part of the Nfield experience, ensures surveys are displayed in the right way for every screen they’re viewed on, whether that’s a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.

With Nfield, you’ve therefore got everything you need to create surveys that are engaging, interactive, and tailored to each specific target audience. Which ultimately delivers better response rates and more comprehensive data to work with.

Survey distribution

Nfield Online surveys can be distributed via email invitations, web links, and social media, so you can choose the most suitable method(s) in every case.

Nfield CAPI surveys, which facilitate offline survey data collection from face-to-face interviews, can be distributed to field interviewers according to your chosen sampling method, whether that be address-based, free intercept or something else. Nfield CAPI enables surveys to be conducted even in remote areas without reliable internet access, while being flexible enough to collect data via various devices, including mobile phones and tablets. With all this, Nfield CAPI offers a truly efficient solution for fieldwork, in whatever location or form it takes place.

Interviewer management

For CAPI surveys, Nfield’s Interviewer Management feature enables management of interviewer workloads and monitoring of whether interviews are being conducted as specified. It has tools for assigning interviews to specific interviewers, monitoring progress, and tracking performance.

Data collection

Collecting survey data is, of course, as essential as getting well-designed surveys in front of the right respondents. Nfield runs in the highly reliable and scalable Microsoft Azure cloud, which robustly supports the handling of large volumes of data and smooth survey execution.

At the same time, Nfield security measures ensure participant data is protected at all times, so both you and your respondents can have peace of mind that their data is safe and secure.

Fieldwork monitoring

Nfield’s Fieldwork Monitoring features give researchers the ability to track and view survey progress in real-time. As well as monitoring response rates, completion rates, and interview durations, it’s also possible to view the collected data via filters which can be set to things such as demographics or response patterns.

Data reporting

Nfield’s Data Repository feature provides a centralized location for storing and managing survey data. This is very advantageous, as it means custom reports can be generated in real-time. By automating the reporting process and enabling fast creation of reports in a variety of formats, this feature saves researchers a lot of time and effort.

Nfield uses: types of surveys

Nfield’s versatility makes it ideal for all kinds of different sectors and purposes, where market research might cover anything from commercial insights to practical user studies, political leanings and employee satisfaction. Here are just a few examples of survey types that can be conducted using Nfield:

• Market research surveys: To gather target audience insights such as preferences, behaviors, and attitudes. These can be used to identify market trends, opportunities, and challenges, and make data-driven decisions for improving products or services. Surveys are easy to design and distribute, while collected data can be viewed and analyzed in real-time.

• Product testing studies: To get user feedback on specific products, with the aim of gaining understanding of how they are perceived, what users like or dislike about them, and how they can be improved. Surveys can be designed as appropriate for specific products and target audiences.

• Brand perception studies: To get insights into how consumers perceive a brand, so the information can be used to identify areas of strength and weakness. These kinds of surveys can incorporate questions relating to things such as brand awareness, brand loyalty, and brand associations.

• Political polls: To ascertain respondents’ political preferences or opinions. These polls can aid understanding of how voters feel about specific issues or candidates, and can provide valuable insights into the political landscape. Questions can be asked about things such as voting behavior, party affiliation, and policy preferences.

• Customer satisfaction surveys: To measure how satisfied customers are with specific products or services. These surveys typically ask respondents to rate their experience on a scale and provide feedback on areas for improvement. The collected data can help with identifying trends and making data-driven decisions for improving customer satisfaction.

• Brand awareness surveys: To measure a brand’s awareness and perception among a specific audience. These surveys typically ask respondents to compare the brand-in-question against a list of competitors and describe how they feel about it. The collected data can aid understanding of how a specific brand is perceived in the market and data-driven decisions for improving brand awareness.

• Employee satisfaction surveys: To measure employee satisfaction, engagement, and feedback. These surveys typically ask employees to describe how they feel about their work environment, job satisfaction, and overall experience with the company. The collected data can aid identification of areas for improvement and data-driven decisions for improving employee satisfaction and retention.

Want to know more?

You’re never on your own with Nfield, as we provide a wide variety of supporting materials and resources.

The NIPO Academy section offers a range of training videos and webinars that cover topics such as Academy #33 – Nfield Online introduction session, and Academy #25: CAPI in the new Nfield Manager II. These videos provide a great starting point for those who are new to Nfield or want to refresh their knowledge.

In the Nfield Manager, you’ll find a range of support materials, including user guides and technical documentation.

And for further personal assistance and guidance, you can always reach out to NIPO’s customer support team.

Among the many decisions you have to take as a market research professional, choosing whether to distribute each online survey via a generic or unique links is more important than it might at first seem. However, armed with the right guidance, you should be able to identify the best option in each case, without too much difficulty.

Here are the benefits, drawbacks and reasons to choose each option, together with how to generate these links in Nfield.

Unique survey links

Unique survey links are when every invited respondent is assigned their own personalized URL to access the survey. The overarching benefit of using unique links is that you can track individual responses and identify which participants have completed the survey. Because unique links can only be used once, they also reduce the chance of your survey being infiltrated by robots.

Situations where unique links are the best choice include:

1. When you need to track individual responses and identify which participants have completed the survey. This is particularly useful when you are offering incentives for completion.

2. When you need to ensure data quality. Because unique links can only be used once, they prevent participants from responding multiple times and/or sharing them with multiple other people. So your results are not skewed by duplicated responses and you maintain better control over who’s contributing to your data.
   
   You can tighten this up further in Nfield by turning on the “allow only known respondent” option when setting up your unique link survey. (See image under “How to generate unique survey links in Nfield”, below.)

3. When you need or want to personalize the survey experience by using the participant’s name or other personal details within it to create a more engaging experience that increases response rates.

How to generate unique survey links in Nfield

You will need to include individual respondent keys as part of your sample upload, then add these keys to the end of your generic survey URL – so genericURL/[respondentkey] – to create all the unique links. Alternatively, you can get Nfield to automatically generate the links when sending out the email invitations. When you have an integration between Nfield Online and an external source, such as a panel provider, your panel provider can easily arrange it in the panel system. This ensures each participant receives a unique link that can only be used once.

The “Allow only known respondents” option.

Generic survey link

A generic survey link is when all potential respondents receive the same link to enter the survey, regardless of their identity or demographic. The overarching benefit of using a generic link is that it’s quick and easy to distribute to a large number of people, because you can simply share the same link via emails, social media, or any other channel you want to use.

A couple of pointers for when to opt for a generic link:

1. A generic link should only be used when you don’t need to track individual responses nor identify which individual participants have completed the survey.

2. A generic link is the best option when you want to maintain participant anonymity.

However, it’s worth noting that online surveys can sometimes suffer from high dropout rates, which can impact the overall quality of the data collected. If you’re interested in learning more about the reasons behind high dropout rates in online surveys, we recommend checking out this insightful blog post on Online surveys suffering from high dropout rates? This may be why. It provides valuable insights and strategies to mitigate this issue, ensuring a higher completion rate and more reliable survey results.

Because a generic link gives you less control over who’ll respond, it’s important to set a survey quota target. This will ensure you receive a representative sample of responses from your target audience and reach your desired sample size, while helping prevent the survey from being over-subscribed.

To set up a survey quota target in Nfield, simply navigate to the Quotas tab and define your target based on the relevant criteria (e.g. age, gender, location). Further information can be found in NIPO Academy #27 Quota: Existing features and new additions.

How to generate generic survey links in Nfield:

Simply navigate to the Nfield Launch panel and select “Copy Live Link” under the “Copy Interview Links” session to retrieve your survey’s generic link.

In conclusion

Whether you should opt for a generic or unique links for each online survey depends on your specific goals and objectives. If you need to track individual responses or personalize the survey experience, then unique links are the way to go. On the other hand, if you need to reach a large audience quickly or maintain participant anonymity, then a generic link is the best option.

If you have any questions about survey link types and how to generate them in Nfield, please feel free to contact helpdesk@nipo.com.

As a highly responsible SaaS provider to market research companies, NIPO, the company behind Nfield, fully understands the importance of protecting personal data and safeguarding against potential data breaches. Alongside our own comprehensive measures to prevent data breaches and swiftly lock down in the event of these being bypassed, we are also committed to helping our clients do all they can to protect their valuable data within the Nfield platform.

Prevention

NIPO has the following measures in place to prevent data breaches:

• Encryption – All sensitive data stored in our servers (in the Azure cloud) is encrypted via strong algorithms. This means that even if an attacker gains access to the data, they will not be able to read it without the encryption key.

• Access Controls – We have strict access controls which ensure only authorized personnel can get into our servers and databases. We also have regular reviews of access rights to make sure they are up-to-date and appropriate.

• Network Security – We have robust network security measures in place, including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and other security tools. These help us to detect external threats and prevent malicious parties from gaining access to our network and systems. Nfield runs in the Microsoft Azure cloud, which is, itself, highly secure and monitored 24/7 by Microsoft’s own engineers.

• Security Measures for Programming Code – Like many other organizations, we use a variety of security tools to check our programming code and test it for security vulnerabilities. In addition to these, we also have security checks carried out by external third-parties, such as Secura, to ensure our code is thoroughly tested and secure.

• Employee Training – We provide our employees with regular training and awareness programs to ensure they are kept up-to-date on the latest security threats and how to prevent them. This includes training on topics such as phishing emails, social engineering attacks, and password security.

Data breach handling

In the unlikely event of a data breach, NIPO has a dedicated incident response team that follows a well-defined plan to mitigate the impact. This plan includes the following steps:

• Investigation – We immediately launch an investigation to determine the cause and extent of the breach.

• Containment – Once we have identified the source of the breach, we take immediate steps to contain it and prevent any further unauthorized access to our systems.

• Notification – We notify any affected clients and regulatory authorities as required by law or contractual obligations. We are committed to being transparent and open with our clients about any potential security incidents.

• Remediation – We take steps to remediate any damage caused by the breach, such as restoring backups or implementing new security measures. We also conduct a post-incident review to identify any lessons learned and make improvements to our security measures.

What you can do to protect your respondent data

It is also vitally important that market researchers implement all available measures to protect respondents’ personal data and adhere to GDPR, or other applicable local regulations. At NIPO, we provide resources to help our clients with this, including our GDPR and Nfield Toolkit.

Here are some other simple steps you can take, which include making use of tools and features included in our Nfield platform:

• Data Minimization – Collect only the minimum amount of personal data necessary for each research project. Once you have it, this data should only be kept for as long as absolutely necessary, and then securely disposed of.
  
  We also advise clients to store personal identifiers in the sample table, which will enable you to easily delete sample data from the survey by pseudonymizing or anonymizing it. You can do this for all the sample data, for only specific sample data fields, for all interviews, or for a selection of interviews. This allows you to maintain detailed management of which data you keep in Nfield.
  
  Recently, we also introduced a new automatic survey clean-up feature into Nfield, which deletes inactive surveys that have reached their expiration date. For information about this, see keeping Nfield domains clean helps clients ensure compliance, security, and efficient working.

• Use Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) – This gives accounts an extra layer of security, so that even if an attacker does obtain a password, they still won’t be able to gain access because they won’t have the second code necessary. Read Protecting your Nfield login with two-factor authentication.

• Use the latest Anti-Virus Software – Installing and keeping anti-virus software up-to-date can help protect against malware and other security threats.

• Be Security-Aware – Market researchers should be aware of the latest security threats, such as phishing emails, and take steps to avoid them. This includes not clicking on suspicious links or downloading attachments from unknown sources.

Committed to protecting data

At NIPO, we are committed to protecting personal data and safeguarding against potential data breaches. By implementing a comprehensive security strategy and incident response plan, we are prepared to handle any potential security incidents quickly and effectively. We also provide resources and guidance to help our customers protect themselves and adhere to GDPR regulations. With our commitment to data security, NIPO remains a trusted partner for market researchers looking to conduct research in a secure and compliant manner.

IMPORTANT: suspected data breach?

If you suspect a data breach or security incident related to your use of NIPO’s services, please report it immediately by contacting our Data Protection Officer at helpdesk@nipo.com. Reporting a suspected data breach promptly helps us to take swift action to contain and mitigate the impact of the incident. We take all reports of data breaches seriously and have a dedicated team in place to investigate and respond to incidents as quickly as possible.

Since the launch on 29 March 2013, Nfield has grown to a large scale platform used for data collection around the globe. Nfield is NIPO’s cloud-based Online and CAPI survey solution for market research professionals

Keeping your Nfield domain clean, as in removing all outdated surveys and corresponding data, is essential for maintaining compliancy with data regulations. But that’s not the only reason to stay on top of things. Limiting what you store to what’s absolutely necessary is also better for both data security and efficient working. Here’s why.

1. Regulatory compliance

Standards such as GDPR mean all kinds of businesses around the world need to ensure some form of data compliance. As these regulations typically include restrictions on how long you’re allowed to hold on to third-party data, having a regular clear-out is essential. This is especially the case for market research companies, whose business is all about third-party data!

2. Minimizing exposure to security breaches

The more data you have stored in your system, the more there is to steal. Which means any security breaches will have a bigger and further-reaching impact. Given the large amount of sensitive personal data that’s typically associated with market research, surveys are a highly prized target, as explained in our recent article about the value of Nfield logins on the Dark Web.

It therefore makes sense for your survey respondents and your business reputation to delete surveys, and all their corresponding data, as soon as you’re finished with them.

Good to know: Nfield upholds the highest security standards, adhering to the protocol established in ISO 27001:2013. Read more about Nfield security. However, users still need to take responsibility for protecting passwords, deploying 2-factor authentication and ensuring there are no unprotected “back doors” into their systems.

3. Improved internal collaboration

The less clutter there is within your system, the less likely it is that any of your team members will refer to the wrong information. Clearing out outdated surveys helps keep everybody on the same page, making it easier to work together on updating surveys and making decisions. A practice which can result in better teamwork, improved efficiency, and better outcomes for your business.

4. Compliance with Acceptable Use Policy and avoiding additional charges

Nfield’s acceptable use policy includes domain limits on storage and the number of active surveys for each license level. Keeping your survey system clean can help you avoid exceeding your limits and incurring additional charges.

Introducing an easy solution: automatic clean-up

As solid as the reasons for keeping your system clean are, actually doing it can be a cumbersome task, especially when dealing with outdated or expired surveys. This is why Nfield introduced a new automatic survey clean-up feature which deletes inactive surveys that have reached their expiration date.

Further details about Nfield’s automatic clean-up feature can be found in our Nfield update published recently. Or see the NIPO Academy #39 session recording on this topic.

Voice and video recordings are often used in Online and CAPI surveys to extract deeper responses. But what respondents say and do in these recordings doesn’t always tell you what they really think. You can, however, use voice analysis software to reveal the true emotions behind spoken words.  

Politeness isn’t always a virtue

Social norms mean people tend to behave politely when answering survey questions. And busy lifestyles mean they may not have fully thought through their responses.

Considering that 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious¹, and 38% of vocal communication comes from tone of voice, rather than words themselves², it becomes clear that relying on words alone for market research can miss a lot of essential details. Consequentially, most researchers aren’t getting the information they need to understand what really matters to people and drives their behavior.

Unlocking emotional content

In our continual quest to keep Nfield at the forefront of professional market research, we came across a voice analysis solution called Phebi and decided to put it to the test.

Phebi analyzes speech and breaks it down into what has been said (sentiment) and how it was said (emotion). It does this by checking voice characteristics, such as pitch, rate and tone, every 3 seconds to detect and quantify the underlying emotions. Phebi’s methodology is based on well-accepted social science research and validated via 38,000+ hours of testing.

Phebi’s emotion analysis examines many factors to determine levels of five underlying emotions:

Having put it through its paces, we concluded that Phebi is a useful complement to Nfield Online and CAPI surveys instantly delivering accurate, quantified analysis of people’s nonconscious responses that goes beyond the words they say.

We were also impressed by Phebi’s auto transcription and translation function. In CAPI interviews, we found it could differentiate between interviewers’ and respondents’ voices.

Phebi features include:

• See the emotional landscape with a one-click set of summary reports
• View items of interest in rank order by positive emotional response
• Get summaries that reveal the most intense emotion by topic and more
• Understand respondents by listening to them and seeing emotions
• Easily manage and search within audio and video responses. Uncover ‘micro-moments’ of peak emotion in longer answers. Tell stories and highlight key findings by dragging and dropping to create show reels.
• Work cross-border with local language voice capture and translation
• Instant, accurate, affordable transcription & translation
• Exchange data bi-directionally via CSV or SPSS files, export via PDFs

Connecting Nfield & Phebi

Phebi can easily be used to analyze Nfield voice recordings via a simple connection.

Recordings from Nfield Online surveys can be automatically uploaded to Phebi’s server. For Nfield CAPI surveys, you should continue using the built-in Nfield recorder and upload all your audio files to Phebi in batch.

After feeding your audio recordings into Phebi, you’ll immediately be able to see various reports, such as the ones shown below, in the Phebi portal.

If you are interested in using Phebi’s software, please contact them directly at marketing@phebi.ai for a live demonstration and answers to all your questions about their product.

Note: Phebi’s servers are located in the USA, Europe (Germany) and Australia.

^{1 G. Haltman
2 A. Mehrabian, UCLA}

As a creator of truly purposeful survey solutions, we want every user to be able to get the best out of them. That means ensuring our customers fully understand what our products are capable of and how to utilize that capability to their own advantage. 

Because our Nfield survey platform offers such a wide range of features, specifically designed to meet professional market researchers’ needs, there is a great deal to know. We therefore take a step-by-step approach to educating every individual customer, so the right knowledge is gained at the right time and nobody ever feels overwhelmed.

The Nfield learning process starts while you’re still considering whether we’re right for you. If you decide to come on board with us, we’ll get you fully up-to-speed using your product and continue providing guidance and, if required, access to external support services, for as long as you are an Nfield user.

1. While you’re deciding if Nfield is right for you

A member of the NIPO Sales Team in your region will discuss your specific needs and determine whether, and how, Nfield can meet them. We want to forge successful long-term partnerships which means making sure you’ll be delighted with our service, so we start by carefully assessing whether we are right for each other. 

While doing this, we’ll talk you through the various features Nfield offers for conducting online, face-to-face and (soon) telephone research, as necessary. We’ll point out the things you’ll need to consider, such as the possibility of needing additional training on some of our more advanced features or paid-for optional services (e.g. scripting, styling) delivered by an external partner. 

Of course you’ll be keen to see Nfield in action, so we are happy to oblige via a live demo. We’ll schedule an online session that demonstrates scenarios related to your own requirements. Upon request, we can record the session so you can then share it with others in your organization.

2. Getting you started

Once you’ve signed up to Nfield, the sales representative you dealt with will hand you over to a member of our support team, who’ll work with you to get you up and running. Because the NIPO sales and support teams are closely integrated, the information we’ve already shared will be readily available to every support team member. So you won’t have to explain yourself all over again and they will be fully prepared to set you up. 

We’ll start with a free 2-hour introductory training session, during which you’ll learn how to use the system and launch a survey, as well as other basics which are relevant to your specific needs. You’ll then be ready to start putting Nfield to work.

We’ll introduce you to our support website where you can access documentation, training and NIPO Academy videos, consult support cases and get useful tools.

3. Helpdesk support

You’ll have access to our Helpdesk support team who’ll be happy to help with any problem you might encounter. Our support policy is to respond within 24 hours, but in practice we usually address queries much sooner. Support is free and provided from 2 locations: Amsterdam and Mumbai.  In the event that your closest support center can’t respond fast enough, another center will handle the issue so you’re not kept waiting. There are no limitations to the number of support queries you can submit. If we feel the type of support requests indicate additional training is required, we’ll discuss this with you.

4. Ongoing Training

Via the NIPO Academy, we regularly present free webinars about new Nfield features, best practices and troubleshooting. You can see a recent session wherein we did the Nfield Online introduction training session.

5. Advanced Training

Once you’ve become comfortable with using Nfield, you might want to get trained in advanced skills such as scripting, effective fieldwork management, safeguarding email reputation and many more. ODIN scripting, which gives you the power to fully customize NIPO survey functionality, is a particularly popular course. A lot of Nfield users also like to bring us in to train their newcomers. Please note that Advanced Training and onboarding new personnel are paid-for services.

6. External Services

Because some of our customers prefer to focus on their core market research activities, rather than also getting involved with more technical matters, NIPO has teamed up with DataExpert to offer services for:

• Scripting: to customize questionnaire structure and logic.
• Theming: to develop custom look and feel (useful for branded surveys).
• Visualization: to advise on data processing and visualization of collected data.
• Hosting: to host and manage surveys in Nfield.

7. Become certified

Nfield users who have acquired sufficient knowledge to independently conduct research on the Nfield platform have the opportunity to get certified. NIPO provides a training and certification program with courses that teach you more about survey scripting, ODIN Developer capabilities, managing fieldwork and market research in general. More information.

Ensuring your success

Our onboarding process and follow-up support and services enable every customer to get the most out of Nfield. From feeling comfortable at the start to becoming an expert over time, with access to all the materials, information, tools and services you need to work in the most productive way.

If you’d like more information on how we can help you, please contact us at info@nipo.com.

See what Nfield can do for you, ask us for a live demo.

It is our pleasure to report that the Microsoft Partner Network has upgraded NIPO’s Security competency status from Silver to Gold. This means we now have Microsoft’s highest possible recognition for four competencies: Application Development, Cloud Platform, Application Integration and Security. A quartet of achievements which reflect our commitment to having our team members certified to the most up-to-date standards, as we determinedly adopt the latest Microsoft technology and standards within our Nfield platform.

We want to wholeheartedly thank all our team members for their ongoing support and commitment towards continuous training and certification, in the course of growing our status within the Microsoft Partner Network.

Jeroen Noordman, NIPO Managing Director: “This latest status upgrade is great news for Nfield users, who can confidently reassure their own customers that their data is 100% safe and secure by referring to this recognition, in tandem with our ISO 27001 certification. In my experience, sharing evidence of leading external recognition has a hugely positive impact. Everyone will understand Microsoft’s authority in the field of security.”

Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president at One Commercial Partner (OCP) at Microsoft Corp.: “Achieving Gold Competency confirms that partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology. These partners have deep expertise that positions them at the top of our partner ecosystem, with a proficiency which can help customers drive innovative solutions.”

A Kish Grid is a mechanism for randomizing who to interview within a household when going door-to-door. Its purpose is to eliminate bias that can be created by just interviewing whoever happens to answer the door, because younger and older household members are less likely to do this.

How a Kish Grid is used

Knowing what a Kish Grid looks like, and how it’s read, is helpful for understanding how to script one. 

• The left-hand column shows the sequence of households being visited. There is no specific guideline for the order of assignment. This can be by house number, by the number of visits the interviewer has made or by the order in which addresses were added to the list.
• The top row shows the number of eligible people in a household.

The Kish Grid is read by cross-referencing the Household Sequence number (e.g. 7) against the Number of eligible people in that household (e.g. 4). In this example, the resulting answer is 3. This indicates the interviewer should interview the 3^rd youngest eligible person in the household.

How to create a Kish Grid script in Nfield

The complete Kish Grid script can be downloaded from a link at the end of this article. The extracts below are just a selection of examples to help you understand how the script and variables are constructed.

Setting up the randomization
This starts with creating arrays for each of the eight columns. Using a household size of 100 provides good scope for randomization.

*VARS EligablePeopleNum1[100], EligablePeopleNum2[100], EligablePeopleNum3[100],
EligablePeopleNum4[100], EligablePeopleNum5[100], EligablePeopleNum6[100],
EligablePeopleNum7[100], EligablePeopleNum8[100]

Specify an array of 8 counts. These counts will be used for looping in each column to populate its value. As we have 8 columns to represent a maximum of 8 eligible people in a household, 8 counts are needed.  

*VARS Count[8]

Set each of count value to 1 as initialization for counting.

*REPEAT 8
*PUT Count[?R][1]
*ENDREP

The script will now populate the table by repeating a simple loop 100 times to fill in each row, one after one. In each loop, it fills in each column.

*REPEAT 100
*PUT EligablePeopleNum1[?R] [1]
*IF [Count[2] <= 2] *PUT EligablePeopleNum2[?R] [Count[2]] *PUT Count[2] [Count[2]+1]
*IF [Count[2] >2] *PUT Count[2] [1]
*IF [Count[3] <= 3] *PUT EligablePeopleNum3[?R] [Count[3]] *PUT Count[3] [Count[3]+1]
*IF [Count[3] >3] *PUT Count[3] [1]
*IF [Count[4] <= 4] *PUT EligablePeopleNum4[?R] [Count[4]] *PUT Count[4] [Count[4]+1]
*IF [Count[4] >4] *PUT Count[4] [1]
*IF [Count[5] <= 5] *PUT EligablePeopleNum5[?R] [Count[5]] *PUT Count[5] [Count[5]+1]
*IF [Count[5] >5] *PUT Count[5] [1]
*IF [Count[6] <= 6] *PUT EligablePeopleNum6[?R] [Count[6]] *PUT Count[6] [Count[6]+1]
*IF [Count[6] >6] *PUT Count[6] [1]
*IF [Count[7] <= 7] *PUT EligablePeopleNum7[?R] [Count[7]] *PUT Count[7] [Count[7]+1]
*IF [Count[7] >7] *PUT Count[7] [1]
*IF [Count[8] <= 8] *PUT EligablePeopleNum8[?R] [Count[8]] *PUT Count[8] [Count[8]+1]
*IF [Count[8] >8] *PUT Count[8] [1]
*ENDREP

The script will generate a question in the CAPI survey asking how many eligible people the household consists of.

*QUESTION 10 *NUMBER 61L1 *SAVE FamilySize *MAX 8
How many people live in this household?

And ask for their names, in ascending age

*QUESTION 2 *FORM *CONTROL Q11 W
Name them in ascending age (youngest first)

1: 1-*ALPHA 71L30 *SAVE Name[1]
2: 2-*ALPHA 101L30 *SAVE Name[2]
3: 3-*ALPHA 131L30 *SAVE Name[3]
4: 4-*ALPHA 161L30 *SAVE Name[4]
5: 5-*ALPHA 191L30 *SAVE Name[5]
6: 6-*ALPHA 221L30 *SAVE Name[6]
7: 7-*ALPHA 251L30 *SAVE Name[7]
8: 8-*ALPHA 281L30 *SAVE Name[8]

Let’s look at an example where we’ve just used a random number as the household sequence number.

*PUT HouseHoldSeq [RAN(8)]
*PUT HouseHoldSeq [HouseHoldSeq + 1]

Or you can choose a Household Sequence number from your respondent table. In this case, make sure the array sizes are also adjusted in the script.

Next, we refer to this table to find which person should be interviewed.

*VARS ans
*IF [FamilySize = 1] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum1[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 2] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum2[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 3] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum3[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 4] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum4[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 5] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum5[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 6] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum6[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 7] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum7[HouseHoldSeq]]
*IF [FamilySize = 8] *PUT ans [EligablePeopleNum8[HouseHoldSeq]]

*PAGE
Family size: *?FamilySize
means to use array EligablePeopleNum*?FamilySize

Household Seq: *?HouseHoldSeq
means to use row *?HouseHoldSeq

So you should pick the family member *?Name[ans] in the *?ans (-th) position to interview

The following animation gives an idea how it looks from interviewer’s perspective.

We hope this helps you understand how to set up your own Kish Grid in Nfield CAPI, based on our Kish Grid script. If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Download Nfield CAPI Kish Grid script

It’s natural for researchers, fieldwork managers, sample managers and sample providers to want the highest possible completion rate for every online survey. And while a certain amount of dropouts are to be expected, alarm bells can start ringing when the percentage appears to be too high.

If there’s no obvious explanation, such as the survey being very time-consuming or poorly presented, the reason may be a technical one. Having investigated a number of reported survey dropout cases at NIPO, we have identified five likely technical causes, along with ways to mitigate them:

1. Bots hitting on ‘anonymous link’ surveys.
2. Bots hitting on survey links which contain Respondent Keys, when surveys aren’t ‘anonymous’.
3. Email Service Providers checking links in email invites.
4. A problem with API automation calls from Nfield Online interviewing.
5. An issue in Nfield.

If you’re concerned about overly high dropouts in any of your surveys, it could be worth looking into these possible causes.

1. Bots hitting on ‘anonymous link’ studies

When an ‘anonymous link’ to a survey is shared on a social network, allowing anyone who finds it to enter the survey, you can expect bots to pick up on it and ‘give it a try’. We have observed a number of surveys with literally millions of interview starts that can be attributed to bots, rather than human respondents.

These starts can be recognized in your survey data, as there will be no answers to any of the survey questions. You may still see automatically generated ‘respondent data’, such as device detection, which has been run before the first question is shown. But no data other than that.

How to prevent it
Add a simple landing page between the link and the actual interview start. All it needs to have on it is some text that introduces the survey and asks for confirmation to continue, with a button that brings the respondent into the actual interview.

When tested on previously mentioned cases with the millions of dropouts, which were suspected as being caused by bots starting the interviews, this simple trick lowered the dropout rate from over 99.9% to below 10%. From this, we concluded that (most of the) bots that were causing the high dropout rates do not follow up (by ‘clicking the button’) after the initial request.

It’s understandable that you may feel hesitant about adding ‘yet another screen’ to the survey. But if it already has an introduction page, on which the respondent is only required to click a button, why not simply move this page up the order, as described above?

Why ‘non-legitimate’ interview starts matter

• a. Interview starts are relatively expensive, as opening the first question page initiates all the processes and creates all the artefacts needed for the survey.
• b. These false interview starts mess up your survey metrics, as you won’t be able to see how many genuine dropouts you had, and therefore cannot get an idea of your survey’s quality.

Of course, there are also bots which are smart enough to follow up on some questions and provide pseudo answers. When that is the case, the simple landing page solution will not work.

2. Bots hitting on survey links which contain Respondent Keys, when surveys aren’t ‘anonymous’

Even if you don’t share your survey link via a social network, but invite all your respondents personally, providing each with a link containing a unique Respondent Key, bots can still find these and ‘give it a try’. Some smart bots even make up Respondent Keys that they then try.

How to prevent it
As in example #1 (Bots hitting on ‘anonymous link’ studies), a landing page can help. But if the bot is somewhat smart, this alone may not resolve the issue.

If you observe your survey being ‘polluted’ with Respondent Keys you did not hand out, you may want to set the ‘Allow only known respondents’ setting to True. With this option set, Nfield will only allow respondents with Respondent Keys that have been uploaded into the survey sample table.

3. Email Service Providers checking links in invites

If you share personalized links (containing unique Respondent Keys) via email to specific respondents, dropouts can also be caused by the respondents’ email service providers checking that link as part of their automated security process. It is common for email service providers to follow links in emails sent to their customers to check they don’t trigger malicious action. We know, for example, that Google, Hotmail and Yahoo do this to protect their users.

Following these links often means opening them, which causes the interview to be started. The email service provider will conclude that the link is safe, but until the email recipient (i.e. the actual respondent) also clicks that link, the survey will be considered by Nfield as a dropout, because the survey was started but not finished.

How to tell if this is the cause of your dropouts
Take a look at the times these unfinished interviews were started. If you see many dropouts at around the time, or shortly after, you sent out your email invites, this is a good indication.

4. Problems with API automation calls from Nfield interviewing

Before respondents are even shown their first question, many Online surveys begin by automatically running processes to establish the respondent’s device and browser (to determine how the questions should be rendered) and to verify the link that started the interview has not been tampered with.

These processes often involve Nfield interviewing making API calls to services which are external to Nfield. These API calls are not always performed as well as they should be, especially when the load is high. When an API request takes too long to be serviced, Nfield can give up on the request and time out. Without getting the response necessary for the interview to start, the respondent also gives up and closes the browser.

Sometimes these API requests just fail. If no appropriate measures have been taken in the questionnaire script to deal with a failing request, the script can run into an error. When the respondent sees this, they drop out.

5. An issue in Nfield

A less frequent cause of high dropout rates can be an issue in Nfield itself.
NIPO mitigates issues once these have been reported or recognized. Depending on the severity, hotfixes can be put in place.

What to do when your Nfield Online survey has unexpected high dropout

Consider each of the first four possible causes described above, and see if you observe anything that indicates any of them as the likely cause. Then take the suggested action.

If, after doing this, you still think what you see is the result of a bug in Nfield, create a support ticket. Share as much detail as possible.

As Market Research requirements continue to evolve, we’ve recognized a need for sampling points which also incorporate addresses.

Quota sampling and address-based sampling are commonplace. Up till now, it has been a choice of one or the other. However, it would be beneficial to combine the two, for both practical and financial reasons.

Follow up: We’ve often heard about market researchers who’ve needed to follow up on incomplete visits (e.g. busy respondent) to complete a sample quota.

Avoid over-shoot: In address-based sampling, fieldwork projects can be made more cost-efficient by stopping interviewing when enough addresses have been completed.

When do you need to combine quota and address sampling?

You should choose to set up this survey type in Nfield if your project has the following characteristics

• 1. It has a quota specification.
  AND
• 2a. It includes a requirement to interview at specific addresses.
  OR
• 2b. Incomplete interviews must be followed up.

How-to

Setting up a combined quota-address survey in Nfield is similar to setting them up separately. 

Before you start, we recommend watching NIPO Academy 37 to learn how to set up a CAPI survey with sampling point with/without quota. You can also refer to our blog post Embedding Sampling Points in Quota Target surveys for deeper and more balanced insights. Then, you just need to add the addresses.

Setting up this survey type is easy.

If you have any questions or comments about setting up and using CAPI surveys with Sampling Points with addresses and quotas in Nfield Manager, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Market researchers examining in-store shopping behavior are increasingly asking us for virtual shelf functionality.

Traditionally, researching this subject has been done by setting up physical displays and inviting shoppers to the relevant locations. However, this is an expensive exercise. And since the coronavirus pandemic, online methods for capturing shopping behavior have become very popular.

In response to this rising demand, we have been working with ConceptSauce to understand their solutions and develop a means of incorporating virtual shelf research in Nfield.

Discover virtual shelves

ConceptSauce can provide a virtual shelf or virtual store for market research, which enables shoppers’ actions to be monitored and timed. Virtual shelves can easily be adjusted to carry out A/B testing with altered prices, added promotional banners, changed packaging or different product positioning. You can also find out what happens when you send shoppers on a mission to find a particular product.

When it comes to building your own shelves, ConceptSauce can do this for you, or you can do it yourself using their shelf builder.

Gaining insights through Nfield

Letting respondents loose on your virtual shelves is just the start.

Integrating Virtual Shelf in Nfield opens up a host of survey possibilities. Once the virtual shopping has been done, you can retrieve the lists of both the purchased items and the ones which were looked at but not chosen. Your Nfield questionnaire can ask why these decisions were made. In the case of sending shoppers to find specific products, you can see where they looked and how long it took.

How to integrate Virtual Shelf in Nfield

The following high-level steps outline what needs to be done to integrate Virtual Shelf in Nfield. You can, of course, get your technical teams to explain!

1. Contact ConceptSauce for a demo, then set up your shelves.
2. Refer to Academy #30 – Pause and resume surveys in Nfield Online to incorporate your survey transitions with ConceptSauce.
3. Refer to Nfield External API to retrieve respondents’ shopping behavior. You’ll need to build a custom web page as an intermediary for using the ConceptSauce API and re-arrange the output to align with Nfield formatting.

Of course, you are very welcome to contact our helpdesk / salespeople for more information. Also, please feel free to share examples with us of how you’ve made this work.

In an online survey world that’s reliant on text responses, do you ever wonder how much you might be missing? Especially for questions which invite free-form answers. When you have respondents who struggle with typing, or articulating thoughts via written words, or for whom the survey is not in their first language.

To solve this, we need to think beyond text. We need to see what other possibilities are out there. We need to be inspired by behavioral changes, such as the increasing popularity of using WhatsApp for voice messaging instead of text messaging.

Voice messaging benefits both sender and recipient by allowing more information to be communicated, in less time, without the effort of pre-organizing thoughts. It also facilitates an extra layer of expression through tone-of-voice. And it’s a convenient solution for young and old alike.

Audio recorded survey answers

Enabling audio answers in online surveys can therefore open up a whole new world of quality research, from a wider range of respondents. Respondents will share more information, including their emotions, and explain themselves better.

But how do you handle voice responses, to extract all the information they contain? Do you need extra resources, people and coding? Yes and no. There are already solutions which can intelligently transcript audio recordings into text and analyze tones-of-voice to identify emotions. However, humans will probably still be needed to ensure proper understanding of more in-depth messages.

Video recorded survey answers

To take your market research on respondents’ emotions to the next level, you can even consider video answers. Have you ever thought about how much information is revealed by a person’s facial expression?

According to research¹ published in 2020, there are 16 universal facial expressions². Imagine what you could learn about how a respondent instinctively feels, if you could capture their facial expression when they see an advertisement, poster, news story or new product.

Or what about their behavior when encountering new packaging design, how they use your hand soap or how they pour your drinks? Having these moments recorded can provide much more information than asking for conscious descriptions.

Worried about the overhead? You needn’t be. Professional emotion recognition software is able to analyze and interpret captured expressions.

How to integrate audio and video responses in online surveys

To find out how to integrate audio and video recordings in Nfield Online surveys, see our post about to set this up this with Pipe.  Also check out Phebi AI for voice emotion analysis.

^{1 Sixteen facial expressions occur in similar contexts worldwide
2 How to Read Facial Expressions}

Security is one of NIPO’s top priorities, with both security and compliance positioned at the heart of our organization, and our Nfield platform. As such, we ensure these topics are always addressed in the foundations of our work, during the design stage. Never as a last-minute concern. And we have been doing it like this since we started developing Nfield back in 2011.

This means NIPO employees are constantly considering security. A fact which is reflected in our ISO 27001:2013 certification, for both our security management and the security controls we give our customers.

But we don’t stop there.

When Microsoft provided the opportunity for developers to become certified as Azure Security Engineers, we encouraged our team members to attain this status. This requires an individual developer to study and practice hard, before taking a challenging exam. In April 2022, another of our colleagues passed the Azure Security Engineer (AZ-500) exam, bringing our total number of developers with this highly desirable status to five.

We’re really proud of this latest achievement and wish to thank the individual concerned, along with all our Azure Security Engineers, for their support and ongoing commitment to security.

If you want to know more about how your data is secure with Nfield, see our article on this topic.

If you’d like to incorporate audio and video responses within Nfield surveys, you can do this by integrating Pipe’s recording platform. Below is an example of how this feature might be useful.

Before you start

Incorporating Pipe into Nfield surveys requires specific technical expertise. You’ll need someone who is

• Experienced in JavaScript & CSS
• Experienced in using Nfield themes and familiar with its documentation.

Gather your resources

• Pipe website
• Pipe Documentation
• Nfield Chicago Documentation
• Academy #6 NfieldChicago theming
• Pipe script example
• Pipe theme example

Setting up Pipe

1. Choose a suitable price plan.
2. Sign up and sign in to Pipe.
3. In the main screen, set up your recorder (see below)

Note: You should set the display size according to the device your respondents will use. It is also possible to make the sizing responsive to a range of device screens. Please refer to Pipe’s own instructions for this.

4. Click [Generate Embed Code].
5. Go to the “Add it to your website” box (see below) and find the JavaScript code in the 2.0 JS tab.

6. Save the values shown for AccountHash and EID (found at the bottom of the “Add it to your website” box). These will be needed later.
7. By default, audio recording in mobile devices requires a recorder app which respondents may not have. To change to inline recorder,

• go to the settings icon next to the Production dropdown box.

• tick the following boxes to use the inline recorder.

• Now click [Save environment] button at the bottom of the page to save the settings.

Script setup

Here is an example of ODIN script that will show an audio recorder and a video recorder. You can also download the script here. See beneath for explanations.

1. Adds the theme name.
2. Sets a font that is a bit hidden to hide the payload setting
3. If working on a specified-respondents survey, each original respondent key is used for mapping the recordings.  
4. If working on an anonymous survey, this generates a random number which is saved as SecondRespondentKey in the sample table and used to map the recordings.

Note: The higher the random number, the lower the chance of the duplicate SecondRespondentKey being made. You should therefore check this or decide which recordings to pick in the data processing part.

5. The theme recognizes “addpipe=true” in UIOPTIONS as an instruction to insert an audio recorder.
6. The hidden font is now used to hide the text in that line. And it uses [payload=(respondentkey)q(question number)] to pass this information form the script to the recorder.
7. The theme recognizes “Addpipev=true” in UIOPTIONS as an instruction to insert a video recorder.
8. Completion of the survey question is acknowledged.

Note: Once each recording is uploaded to Pipe, you might want to add *BACK to prevent re-recording or do a check on re-recordings (spotted by same payload).

Theme setup

1. Open nfield.theme.js with a text editor e.g. Notepad++.
2. Find the following identifiers in nfield.theme.js. The first instance is for the audio recorder and the second instance is for the video recorder.
   
   accountHash:" YourAccountHash", eid:"YourEID"

3. Replace YourAccountHash and YourEID with the JavaScript values previously generated in Pipe. (See step 5 in Setting up Pipe.)
4. Update other parameters according to values generated by your JavaScript.
5. Zip it and upload to Nfield Manager in the usual way.

Check recording functionality

1. Click the link to your survey.
2. As soon as you land on a recording page, your browser will ask for permissions to use your microphone and/or camera as relevant. Click “Allow”.

3. Test running the surveys and make some recordings.
4. Go to Pipe, where these should appear in the recording tab, and check the payload value.

Storage setup

1. Go to the settings icon next to the Production dropdown box.
2. Check its Region settings.

Note: These recordings will be out of scope of Nfield. You should therefore be aware of the location where the data is stored, along with any different security and compliance levels.

3. Go to the Storage tab and select Your storage.
4. Consider the options for storing in an alternative environment to that provided by Pipe.

Mapping Payload to Filename

It would be too labor intensive to click every individual record to find the payload information (respondent key and question id) to rename its recording file. But you can automate this task by using a webhook to send the payload and file name to trigger file renaming (optimally in batches). Please refer to the Pipe Webhook documentation for how to use their webhook. Alternatively, you can program something yourself or use other codeless automation tools, such as Microsoft Power Automate, to do the work.

We hope you find these instructions useful. Please feel free to share your feedback with us.