What does aborted mean in the context of pavlovia surveys?

Hi we have an MSc student using pavlovia surveys for her research. We are a bit confused what “aborted” means in the context of pavlovia surveys. On the survey dashboard it says the number of responses submitted/aborted. I assumed aborted meant they didn’t reach the complete survey button. However the student has selected do not save partial responses and looking at the data participants seem to have reached the end of the survey. We noticed in the data file there is an “is complete” true/false statement. Does this correspond to the aborted surveys? Testing it out myself it seems a response registers as aborted if there is missing data even if I press survey complete.

Clarification on what aborted means would be appreciated by anyone in the know. Our ethical guidelines say we should not save partial data where someone does not complete the survey, as we take this to mean they have withdrawn. So we wanted to clarify that isn’t what is happening here.

Thanks

Unlike Qualtrics, Pavlovia doesn’t save aborted participant data from surveys.

Incomplete is currently not very useful. It means that not every question has an answer, but this could be because not every question was asked. This will change at some point.

I haven’t investigated the behaviour of multi-block surveys.

Hi Wakefield,

Thanks for responding.

Oh I see, that makes sense with the incomplete column in the data file. Is that also what the aborted refers to on the surveys dashboard? All incomplete (for whatever reason) survey responses? Or is it supposed to be where participants didn’t press complete survey?. From the total number of participant responses in the data file it appears that data from those recorded as “aborted” is still being stored as the number exceeds the “submitted” count.

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