System questions

System questions collect information about participants as they complete your survey.

System questions behave like standard questions, and you can add them to question groups, reports, exports, and filters.

Use system questions to learn more about your participants, to increase data accuracy, or to further engage your participants.

Note: System questions are different from system variables. System questions can only be used with power surveys, and the data they collect comes from power surveys only. System variables are used to track members' statuses across the Community application.

Note:

The CompletedDate, StartedDate, and InvitationDate are displayed in Pacific Time (PT) (UTC-8). When you use these system date questions in filters or conditions in reports or surveys, convert your preferred time to PT (UTC-8).

For example, to find participants with a CompletedDate before 09:00 Eastern Time (UTC-5), set the condition to CompletedDate is before 06:00 PT (UTC-8).

CompletedDate

CompletedDate collects date and time information for when each participant completes your survey by answering your survey questions and reaching the end of your survey.

StartedDate

StartedDate collects date and time information for when each participant reaches the first page of the survey.

InvitationDate

InvitationDate collects date and time information for when each participant was invited to the survey. The question records:

• The date and time when you deployed your email invitation.
• The date and time each participant clicked your anonymous link.

Note: When you add an invitation action, Community creates a new system question for invitations and reminders to follow-up surveys. For example, Invite_welcome_study_Status, Invite_welcome_study_Reminder1Date, Invite_welcome_study_Reminder2Date, and so on.

You can use these system questions in your reports, however, you cannot import data to them.

Tip: Email invitations take a few minutes to leave the system. When creating a filter based on the InvitationDate, we recommend using a time range to ensure all the invitations are included in your filter.

ResponseStatus

ResponseStatus tags each participant with their response status in the survey:

• Reserved: Respondents that have been selected for a panel sample.
• Invited: Respondents that received an invitation but have not started the survey.
• Complete: Participants who have answered all applicable survey questions and have reached the completion point in your survey.
• Incomplete: Participants who have answered some questions, but never made it to the completion point in the survey because they voluntarily dropped out of the survey.
• Disqualified: Participants terminated from the survey because they are not qualified to continue the survey.
• Over Quota: Participants who were disqualified from the survey because a quota was full.
• Started: Participants who reached the first page of the survey are marked with Started. Started includes participants with the following statuses:
  • Disqualified
  • Over Quota
  • Complete
  • Incomplete

Note: These are the precodes associated with the ResponseStatus question:

• 0 - Invited
• 1 - Incomplete
• 2 - Completed
• 3 - Disqualified
• 4 - Reserved
• 5 - OverQuota

Version

Version uses numbers to track which version of the survey each participant completes. When you launch a survey, the survey is labeled with 1.0 and participants who take this survey are tagged with 1.0 in the Version question.

If you make changes to the survey and relaunch it, you are prompted to label the survey with a version number. Participants who complete this version of the survey are tagged with your label in the Version question.

Sample

Note: This content applies to upgraded customers only.

The Sample question appears in Sparq 1 surveys deployed prior to upgrade. To track the sample a participant belongs to in a Power Survey, create a hidden question in your survey, then append the answer to the survey link. For more information see, Append answer values to an activity link and Append answer values to the ActivityLink pipe.

Sample tracks which sample each participant belongs to for the survey. Use this question to ensure unique samples for two or more surveys being launched around the same time.

Communication

Communication tags participants who received the survey invitation and any reminders.

CompletionTime

CompletionTime calculates the number of minutes each participant took to complete your survey.

CompletionTime = StartedDate - CompletedDate

OSType

OSType records each participant's operating system. Options include:

• Mac (OSX)
• Linux
• Windows
• iOS
• Android
• BlackBerry
• Unknown

BrowserType

BrowserType records each participant's web browser. Options include:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Safari
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• BlackBerry
• Android
• Unknown

BrowserVersion

BrowserVersion lets you enter exact information about a participant's web browser and version number.

BrowserExperience

BrowserExperience records browser statistics for participants. The statistics include:

• Visual Question Ready
• Javascript Enabled
• User Agent
• Client Side Error Encountered
• Server Side Error Encountered

For more detailed User Agent information, use BrowserExperience_useragent_other.

DeviceType

DeviceType records which device the participant used to complete the survey. Options include:

• Tablet
• Desktop
• Phone

If your Respondent Access setting blocks certain devices, DeviceType data varies. The following table summarizes how Respondent Access settings affect DeviceType data:

Respondent Access setting	DeviceType data
	Phone	Tablet	Desktop
Web survey for everyone	Included as Phone	Included as Tablet	Included as Desktop
Computer and mobile	Included as Phone	Included as Tablet	Included as Desktop
Computer only	Not available	Included as Tablet	Included as Desktop
Mobile only	Included as Phone	Not available	Not available

RespondentExperience

RespondentExperience records the compatibility of a participant's viewing mode with different question display modes. Options include:

• Visual
• Mobile (touch)
• Mobile (non-touch)

If your survey is mobile-enabled, RespondentExperience records participants on mobile devices under Mobile (touch) and Mobile (non-touch).

RespondentSource

Note: RespondentSource is only available for surveys created after May 9, 2012.

RespondentSource records where each participant came from. This data is only relevant for Facebook portal integration.

Parent topic: Power surveys