External Study Credit Granting with Alchemer (SurveyGizmo)

While these instructions refer to “credit granting”, they work for both credit and paid studies. For paid studies, participation will be marked (instead of credit granted) just like with any other paid study.

With Alchemer (SurveyGizmo), it is best to follow the URLs listed below that describe the process in detail on the Alchemer website. In those documents, “panel company” refers to our system, and you will only need to focus on the Completed Surveys Link. The Over Quota and Disqualified links are not applicable or implemented in this situation. Note that some of the Alchemer features described below may not be available to all Alchemer subscription levels.

Here are the basic steps, which are subject to change (since the product is controlled by Alchemer):

  1. On your Sona Systems site, change the Study URL so it includes ?scode=%SURVEY_CODE% in the URL. So if the Alchemer URL is:
    https://www.alchemer.com/s3/12345/my-survey
    then change it to
    https://www.alchemer.com/s3/12345/my-survey?scode=%SURVEY_CODE%
  2. Having completed Step 1, the Study Information on your Sona Systems site now displays a URL labeled “Alchemer (SurveyGizmo) Redirect to a URL”. In Alchemer, configure the survey to accept the survey code number, via a Hidden Field with a URL Variable named “scode”. To do this, go to Build & Edit | Select Add Action on the first page of the survey. Pick the name “Sona Survey Code” for the action, and click on Add & Edit Action. In the Value section, first click on Insert Merge Code and choose URL Variable. Then, in the Value section, type in [url(“scode”)]
  3. In Alchemer, configure the URL Redirect for completed surveys. On the Thank You page section, go to Action | URL Redirect (in Edit Text Elements). Pick some name for the action, and click on Add & Edit Action. In the URL field, provide the Alchemer (SurveyGizmo) Redirect URL from your Sona Systems site, and be sure to choose “https://” from the pulldown box next to the URL. The Alchemer (SurveyGizmo) Redirect URL should look something like this:
    https://yourschool.sona-systems.com/webstudy_credit.aspx?experiment_id=123&credit_token=4e48f9b638a
  4. Next, on that same page in Alchemer, choose Add Field and choose the question named “Sona Survey Code” from the options and choose Add Field. Then, in the Variable Name textbox, type in survey_code and save your changes.

The Alchemer (SurveyGizmo) Redirect URL provided by the Sona system should be sufficient to paste directly into Alchemer. If you prefer to derive the URL from the Client-Side Completion URL, then you simply need to remove the &survey_code=XXXX from the end of Client-Side Completion URL and also the https:// from the beginning, and place the remaining text in Alchemer.

These features are described on Alchemer’s site at the following URL:

(“Set Up Your Own Panel Integration”) https://help.alchemer.com/help/panel-integration

(“Using URL Variables to Pass Data”) https://help.alchemer.com/help/url-variables