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Create quotas tutorial (r8)

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Overview

IntelliSurvey quotas are easy to create. A quotas: y tag can be added directly to survey questions, or a new quota variable can be set up with type: quotas. This tutorial covers various ways to implement and work with quotas, both in our SPL and our user interface (UI).

Quotas allow us to assign people to categories, like age, gender, or people that like or dislike a product, for example. We can then set targets on these categories and limit the total number of "Completes" in each quota group.

Related reading and resources

The following articles can be used for reference with this training module:

Quotas overview video

The following video provides an introduction to programming quotas and managing them in the Quotas applet. We recommend watching this video before you continue with the training module

Examining quotas in the UI

Quota management

Once quotas are added to the survey source code and the survey is published, targets can then be set in the Quotas applet, a.k.a. the "Quota Manager." 

Quotas Applet Discussion

QUOTAS APPLET FULL SCREEN VIEW.jpg

The Quota Manager lets you set limits, also known as "caps" or "targets," on the various quotas you've defined in your survey source code. See Reviewing and setting quotas for more details on setting quota targets.

As the quotas fill up, they can be monitored and adjusted here. Once a quota is full, the survey will begin redirecting respondents as "Over Quotas" and end the survey for anyone that is in a closed group. If the quota group is opened back up at any point, the survey will resume allowing Completes for that group.

Over Quota tracking

Adding quotas also enables the oq variable in the survey fields for Over Quota tracking.

The 'oq' Variable

You can select the oq variable in any reporting applet. It is located in the Appendix section under Field Management in the reporting field tree.

OQ VARIABLE.jpg

When the quota groups start filling up and you exceed the limit, it's noted using the oq variable. If a respondent goes over the quota, their survey ends, and their final status is set as 'Q'.

Tip! Similarly, the disp variable is also located in this section when termination logic, such as termif, term decorators, or setterm widgets, are added to the survey source code.

Quotas tile

You can easily view the counts for quotas in your survey in the Quotas tile on the Survey Dashboard for quick reference. Statuses are color coded in this tile view; so it's easy to assess progress at a glance.

The Quotas tile can also be accessed from the System Dashboard's survey tile. You can select different quotas from your survey with the pulldown menu.

Quota Tile Image

Discussion

The default view of the Quotas tile is a stacked bar chart showing the counts for each option of a specific quota or click balance quota. Options that are uncapped have a blue bar, and options that are capped have a green bar. For capped options, the first segment of each bar provides the number of completes up to the cap. The second segment provides the number unfilled or the additional Completes over the cap as needed. Once a bucket is full, any extra Completes will appear in red.

The quota controls can be made available to clients and other vendors, allowing them to quickly review and modify quotas during fielding.

Tip! The Status tile, also located on the Survey Dashboard, provides current counts for how the survey is progressing overall — the total number of Completes, Terminates, Over Quotas, In-Progress, and Inactive records. Find out more about respondent statuses in Understanding respondent statuses.

Adding quotas to a survey

Let's take a closer look by adding some quotas to our tutorial survey.

Open the 'Tutorial - quotas.docx' file attachment at the bottom of this article. Review the questionnaire instructions for quota updates highlighted in aqua. You'll notice these are the same questions covered in the previous tutorials, simply with quotas added.

Questionnaire Content

 Discussion Details Coded SPL

[MAX 10% No]

A1 uses the quotas: y tag to create quota buckets based on the response options. The default selection method for quotas is to pick a group by condition. 

A default variable, QA1_QUOTA will be generated, and A1's question text is used to label the quota variable as: "Quota for: Do you like colors." You can apply the oqtext tag to change the default text to "Likes Color Quota."

 Add these tags to A1:
A1. Do you like colors?
type: radio
1. Yes
2. No
quotas: y 
oqtext: Likes Color Quota

[MIN 80% correctly select orange/yellow/red]

The next quota for A1A, A1B, and A1C evaluates each question to see if the correct color was selected. This quota creates two groups, one group for 'correct colors' and another for '1 or more incorrect.' For this quota, we use the standalone variable approach (type: quotas) because the quota needs don't precisely match the question's option list and depend on multiple conditions.

The instructions aim for a minimum of 80% that correctly answer all three questions. This minimum quota cannot be directly set as a target. To satisfy this request, we would simply cap the incorrect (opposite) group at 20%, ensuring at least 80% of respondents fall into the correct colors group.

The Correct Colors Quota evaluates responses from all three questions: A1A, A1B, and A1C. For instance, if the responses are '4. Orange' for A1A, '8. Yellow' for A1B, and '6. Red' for A1C, the respondent is categorized into the 'Correct Colors' group. Any deviation in responses results in placement in the '1 or more incorrect' group.

We've also added a new page tag before the quota variable. This page break will separate the termination point from the quota, preventing respondents from receiving both the 'disp' and 'oq' flags in the data.

Add this quota variable after A1C, after the termination:

new page

A1ABC_QUOTA. Correct color quota 
type: quotas
1. Correctly select orange/yellow/red {if anyChecked($QA1A,4) and anyChecked($QA1B,8) and anyChecked($QA1C,6)}
2. Did not select orange/yellow/red {if noneChecked($QA1A,4) or noneChecked($QA1B,8) or noneChecked($QA1C,6)}

[Apply color quotas at QA2 if Yes at QA1; MAX n=125 per color; MAX three quotas assigned per respondent.]

The applyif tag is commonly used to apply panel or country specific quotas. In this case, we are limiting the quota at A2 to only count when the respondents have selected 'Yes' at A1, because this also matches the skip instruction. If respondents do not answer a question, they should be also excluded from the quota based on that question.

You can also use the maxgroups tag for quotas that allow the respondent to qualify for multiple groups to limit the number of quotas assigned. Here, we set maxgroups to '3', so that no more than three quotas are assigned.

Note: As mentioned above, we can't set minimum targets. See Quota setup considerations for additional details.

Setting Targets

The quota targets can be set in the Quotas Manager. Let's set ours based on our overall target of N=1000. ("N" roughly means sample size, total number of respondents.)

At A1, the quota is 10% maximum for 'No.' To achieve this, set a cap of 100 on 'No.' Leave 'Yes' open since we can get as many of those as needed.

The next quota is a minimum of 80% to select the correct colors. Since we cannot set minimums, you'd set a cap of 200 (or 20%) on the incorrect group and leave the correct group open. This will ensure at least 800 can complete in the correct group.

The colors quota instruction at A2 has max for N=125 per color. This is a standard quota, so simply enter 125 as the target per color.

Add this after A2:

A2_QUOTA. Colors Quota
applyif: anyChecked($QA1,1)
maxgroups: 3
type: quotas
optsfrom: QA2

Practice what you've learned

Now that you've had a chance to add quotas to your survey, run dummy data to generate approximately 50 new respondent records. Next, close a few of your quotas by placing caps of '0' on them. Then, generate more dummy data. Finally, review the data output by viewing a Response report or creating a new export in Deliverables. You can also explore a Frequency report to see how respondent data is aggregated for the new quota and 'oq' variables.

All of the concepts found in the 'Tutorial - quotas.docx' were previously discussed in the Create questions and Create tables tutorials.

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