NIPO is introducing a new subset of NIPO Academy sessions, called “Scripting problem of the month”. In this new series one of our scripting experts will take half an hour to discuss a scripting issue that we often see in NIPO ODIN scripts. The first topic we will discuss is: Optimizing loops; how to minimize the loops and the iterations.

We are happy to announce the release of the Survey blueprints feature. With survey blueprints we are introducing a new method in Nfield to create a survey based on a model. This will speed up the creation of surveys with common characteristics and reduce errors for creating standard surveys. In this series of NIPO Academy sessions we will take you through this new feature and if you like what you see we will activate this on your domain.

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.

We noticed that most domains on Nfield have orphaned surveys. Surveys that have had no activity for a long time. To help managing these surveys, NIPO introduced a new Automatic clean-up feature for inactive surveys. In this series of NIPO Academy sessions we will take through all the details of the feature and explain how to exempt surveys from this process.

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 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.

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

NIPO has started a project migrating all the functionality of the classic “CAPI Manager” to the (online) “Nfield Manager”. We are doing this by migrating the different CAPI scenarios from the CAPI Manager to the Nfield Manager one by one. We are now ready to migrate the last remaining scenario (Sample Points with Addresses and Quota).

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.

As you probably know, NIPO has started a project migrating all the functionality of the classic “CAPI Nfield Manger” to the (online) “Nfield Manager”. Shutting down the CAPI Manager will be done this by discontinuing the 2 remaining CAPI scenarios, Sampling points with quota and Sampling points with addresses, one-by-one. We will start with Sampling points with quota. And this NIPO Academy will only deal with this scenario.

NIPO has released a Markdown theme to be used on top of the NfieldChicago template. With this theme you can use various Markdown language commands in your survey to highlight text, organize the survey page and style your survey. In this series of NIPO Academy sessions we will explain how to use this theme and demo some of the new options it provides.

Attractive, easy-to-digest presentation plays an important role in encouraging survey response. Nfield automatically wraps surveys in a professional design that’s consistent with our industry’s highest standards. Most of the time, this provides everything our users need. However, there can be occasions when you want to customize your presentation more extensively.  

Experienced scripters with knowledges of common web development techniques (Javascript and CSS) can add extra presentation elements by incorporating their own theme packages (via a zip file).  

Easier customization using Markdown language 

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that can be used to add formatting elements to plaintext documents.¹ It is very popular, especially among developers, and is widely used by our own teams and in Nfield documentation.  

We’ve added a new pre-packaged theme (markdown.zip) to the theme example section in NfieldChicago documentation for you to use. This includes a third-party library as a Markdown parser, which provides you with additional options for formatting your text using basic Markdown syntax.  

Here’s how it works. 

Examples

1. Header 

Adding headers improves respondents’ experience, by clarifying where they are in the survey.

These are created by simply using # for header 1) and ## for header 2) …etc.

2. Link

Links are sometimes useful for enabling respondents to reference relevant information, which helps them understand context and increase their trust.  

A clickable link that opens in a new tab is created by using [text](url) "optional hover-over text".

3. Simplified font variation

There is no need to define bold, italic and bold and italic for every different font.  

In Markdown language, this is achieved simply by using _italic text_, __bold text__ and ___bold italic text___. This results in much simpler, easier to read scripts.

4. Horizontal rule

If you want to add supplemental information to help respondents answer specific questions, enclosing this between two horizonal lines makes for a good, clear presentation.  

A line can be created in Markdown by using ---.

5. Emojis² 

Millennials are more likely to engage in surveys that are presented in a more visual and gamified way. Emojis³ are also a good tool in this regard.  

You can now copy and paste emojis to your script. See a list of emojis in Unicode 1.1.  

6. Email address

It is usual to provide a means of contact either at the beginning or the end of a questionnaire.  

You can now easily incorporate a clickable link by enclosing your email address as shown here <sales@nipo.com>. This will launch the users email program / app.

How to incorporate an advanced text formatting theme in Nfield  

Instructions for doing this begin at step 7 of 10 Steps to create a theme. If this will be your first time incorporating a theme in Nfield, we recommend watching Academy #6 NfieldChicago theming.  

The world of Markdown is quite extensive, with possibilities ranging from standard headers to more advanced options. Please look at theming in NfieldChicago documentation to download and try this out.  We also have another example theme available for setting font colors called markup.zip (See bottom right for download link). Please feel free to share any feedback or questions you have about themes with us.  

^{1 Getting Started | Markdown Guide
2 Emoji is part of the extended Markdown syntax that is not included in the markdown.zip theme which supports only basic syntax. It is supported as the fact that it is in Unicode.
3 Using emojis in mobile web surveys for Millennials? A study in Spain and Mexico} 

NIPO is proud to announce the opening of our new Mumbai office. In recent years we have seen a strong growth of our business in the Asia Pacific region, something that also was the result of our Nfield China deployment we launched 2 years ago. This major step is now followed by the opening of our new office in Mumbai, that has been in business as of 1 November 2021.

The NIPO Mumbai office will be dedicated to supporting our customers in the Asia Pacific region, with backup from the NIPO Helpdesk in Amsterdam. 

NIPO offers remote support to all Nfield users by email (no telephone at the moment, due to all staff working at home for reasons related to Covid), hosts Nfield introduction sessions and on-site training sessions on topics ranging from survey creation to fieldwork management.

We are delighted to announce the opening of this new office and look forward to supporting you from Mumbai!

As anyone who shares a broadband network with high-capacity users knows, when others are eating away at bandwidth by playing high-definition games, streaming TV shows or live broadcasting over social media, internet performance deteriorates.

The same is true for any shared IT resource. Including Nfield’s survey hosting environment in the Azure cloud. Our acceptable use policy is designed to prevent excessive resource use by some causing performance problems for all. But with the roll-out of our Isolated Interview feature, we aim to completely eliminate the risk of suffering from “noisy neighbors”!

The Noisy Neighbor effect

In a shared hosting environment, an individual survey occupying a disproportionally large amount of processing power will lessen everyone else’s performance. This can happen if a lot of respondents suddenly rush to a survey at the same time, or if a badly scripted questionnaire results in an infinite loop or excessive quota checks.

To prevent this in situations where it can be foreseen, such as the planned launch of a large-scale research project, we ask customers to warn us in advance so we can scale-up capacity as necessary. But errors, such as bad scripts, can overload the system without warning.

Nfield does automatically expand its capability as necessary, but this isn’t instantaneous. In the period before scaling up takes place, online interviewing performance and Nfield manager responsiveness slow down. Respondents can get frustrated and the market research team’s job becomes more difficult, as everyone suffers the consequences of having “noisy neighbors”.

Proactive protection and appropriate scale-up

Thanks to new technology, we have succeeded in developing an architecture whereby each individual survey is run in isolation (survey-level isolation), utilizing its own resources and with the ability to expand these without affecting other surveys.

When an isolated survey reaches its pre-set Nfield threshold, its resources will automatically scale up, without other surveys in the same or different domains being impacted during the moments of heavy loading or scaling. In Nfield design, if a request faces timeout, there is a double fall-back mechanism to keep servicing the request. Initially falling back to the isolated resource, then to the shared resource.

Expanding in this way at survey level is also more economic than doing so at deployment level (as in the noisy neighbor scenario).

By keeping every survey accountable within its own realm, Isolated Interviewing

• eliminates noisy neighbor effect
• scales more economically

A record-breaking case

Isolated Interviewing doesn’t just provide protection from noisy neighbors. It also enables heavy users to scale up faster and cheaper than when in a shared environment. A shining example is a recent project in which 2.36 million requests were handled in a four-day period, peaking at 5,000 requests per minute. This also saw us smash right through the 100,000 successfully completed Nfield interviews in 24 hours barrier for the first time!

Despite this extremely heavy load, processing time remained reasonably fast, with 99% of requests processed within 549ms, and no other customers impacted. In addition to performance speed, the Isolated Interviewing feature provides a more stable, risk-free environment for everyone.

Global roll-out

All domains within our America deployment environment already have Isolated Interviewing enabled. However, Isolated Interviewing only comes into effect in newly-created surveys. Existing surveys remain on shared resources.

Over time, we’ll be carefully rolling Isolated Interviewing out to more domains in other deployment environments. And, of course, we’ll continue to invest in this feature to further increase its capabilities to accommodate our customers’ hunger for high-volume projects.