Forward randomly to one of several selected forms with randomization

If you add multiple forms for forwarding, the respondent will be randomly forwarded to one of the forms.

How to set up randomized forwarding

1. Go to Settings in the form you want to forward from (form A).
2. Add the forms you want to forward to under Forwarding (form B).

   • For example, forms with ID 111111 and 222222.

     

3. When the respondent clicks Send and continue, they will be randomly sent to form 111111 or 222222.
4. Note that if the responses from the first form (A) and the form the respondent is forwarded to (B) are to be linkable, it is important that the forms that are forwarded to (B) have the question element Reference ID.
   • Read more about Reference ID and linking forms with forwarding here.

The form that forwards (A) gets the field forwarded_to_form in the results, which contains the form ID of the form it forwards to (B). In this way, you can see which respondents were sent to which form, in our example 111111 or 222222.

Note that to use this solution you cannot use forwarding via single-choice questions, read more about forwarding based on single choice here.

Information about the implementation of Randomization in Nettskjema

How it works:

• Nettskjema uses cryptographically secure randomization, Java SecureRandom with NativePRNG.
• Each submission is randomly assigned one of the specified forms for forwarding.

Ratio/distribution:

• Equal probability: If you set up 2 forms, each form receives about 50% of the submissions.
• No guaranteed balance: With few submissions, the distribution may be skewed (e.g. 70/30).
• Levels out: With many submissions (100+), it approaches 50/50.

Example:

• 10 responses: Could be 7–3 or 6–4.
• 100 responses: Typically 48–52 to 52–48.
• 1000 responses: Very close to 50/50.

Technical: The algorithm randomly selects from the list each time – there is no “balancing” that forces an equal distribution.

Limitations of the current solution

• The start form and the subsequent forms should have the same permissions for answering. If it is not possible to have the same permissions for the start form and the subsequent forms, the later forms must be open for everyone to respond.
• It is not possible to use randomization for forms that are set up with invitations sent via Nettskjema. To randomize invited respondents, the respondent must first be invited to a separate form, which then forwards randomly to other forms.
• You must yourself assess whether there is a need to inform the respondent about how they should proceed if they need to interrupt their work on answering when they may have to stop answering in a randomized form (B) and continue at a later time. The challenge is that you do not automatically know which form a respondent has been forwarded to. It can be manually found again in the responses to the start form as long as the responses are not anonymous.