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survey errors

You get a notification for a new survey. You open the survey and excitedly start answering questions. But then you come across an error. “Sorry, you are ineligible for this survey,” or “Sorry, the quota for this survey has been reached.”

What does this mean? Let’s have a short walk-through of survey errors you may receive while taking a GeoPoll survey and what they mean.

Quota Reached Errors

To be valid, a survey needs to be taken by a certain number of people – generally referred to as a sample. Since not everyone is able to complete all surveys, we send surveys to more respondents than the surveys actually require to cover for any shortfalls. Quota reached errors may occur in two scenarios: One, assuming we need 500 people to respond to a survey, once we get to 500 completes and you are the 501st you will get the Quota Reached Error. Two, if we need 500 survey responses, and 250 of them need to be from males, if you are the 251st male to answer the survey, you will also get the error “Quota Reached.”

To avoid this, have your App notifications on so that you can be among the first to see and complete a survey.

Survey Expired/Closed Error

We mentioned in this post that surveys are time-limited. Apart from missing the quota, not answering a survey early enough may cause you to find the survey already expired, or closed. For example, if a survey is meant to be completed by 19th December, but you open it on the 20th, you will get the error Survey Expired. Other times, it may not be expired but we may have received enough responses to close the project… if you try after it’s closed, you will receive the error Survey Closed.

The solution here is the same – take the survey as soon as possible to avoid being locked out!

Ineligible Error

For a research project to be accurate, the respondents need to meet a certain match to complete the survey. For example, we may be looking for only females to complete a survey. In such a case, males would be deemed ineligible for a survey.

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We try as much as possible to match our surveys to the right audience, but we don’t always have the necessary information to target surveys only to eligible participants. The possible reasons could be because you have not completed your profile, the first set of profile surveys or if we are looking for respondents who partake in certain activities or have bought certain products.

Being ineligible for a survey that doesn’t affect your eligibility for other surveys. Always ensure that you are responding honestly and that your responses are as accurate as possible.

Other survey errors

Unmatched – This occurs when you enter a value that is different from the required values. An example is where you need to choose your gender as “Male” or “Female” and you enter “girl”.

Multimatched – Multimatched errors occur when you choose/enter more values/answers than needed. In the example above, don’t enter “Male” and “Female”.

Declined – This is not an error per se, but a confirmation that you have declined to take a survey.

Blacklisted – We always ensure that the safety of the community is maintained and that all members act in good faith. Therefore, some users may be blacklisted from either taking a particular survey or all surveys from time to time. In this case, if you are banned from the system, you will get the Blacklisted. This also happens when you opt-out of surveys.

In this post, we have shared the various errors you may come across in GeoPoll surveys. Some may occur on SMS, web or the Application. Many of the errors are avoidable – and now you know what they all mean and how to avoid them!

Take part in such surveys by joining the GeoPoll Community.

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