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Download a survey and import it into R

Source: R/fetch_survey.R
fetch_survey.Rd

Download a Qualtrics survey you own via API and import the survey directly into R.

Usage

fetch_survey(
  surveyID,
  limit = NULL,
  start_date = NULL,
  end_date = NULL,
  time_zone = NULL,
  include_display_order = TRUE,
  include_metadata = NULL,
  include_questions = NULL,
  include_embedded = NULL,
  unanswer_recode = NULL,
  unanswer_recode_multi = unanswer_recode,
  breakout_sets = TRUE,
  import_id = FALSE,
  label = TRUE,
  convert = TRUE,
  add_column_map = TRUE,
  add_var_labels = TRUE,
  col_types = NULL,
  force_request = FALSE,
  verbose = TRUE,
  save_dir = NULL,
  last_response = deprecated()
)

Arguments

surveyID

String. Unique ID for the survey you want to download. Returned as id by the all_surveys function.

limit

Integer. Maximum number of responses exported. Defaults to NULL (download all responses).

start_date, end_date

POSIXct, POSIXlt, or Date object, or length-1 string equivalent of form "YYYY-MM-DD" or "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS". ("/" is also acceptable in place of "-".) Only export survey responses that were recorded within the range specified by one or both arguments (i.e. referencing RecordedDate). Each defaults to NULL (unbounded). See Details for important information about both the package and Qualtrics' handling of start/end times.

time_zone

String. Time zone to use for date/time metadata variables in response dataframe (e.g. StartDate). Must match a time zone name from base::OlsonNames(). Defaults to NULL, which uses the current system timezone (from base::Sys.timezone()). Also applied to arguments start_date and/or expiration_date when given Date or string objects (see above); ignored when these arguments are given POSIXlt/POSIXct objects.

include_display_order

Logical. If TRUE, download from surveys using block/question/answer display randomization will include contain additional variables indicating the randomization pattern used for each case. Defaults to FALSE.

include_metadata, include_questions, include_embedded

Character vector. Specify variables to include in download. Defaults to NULL (keep all). NA or character() excludes all variables for that category. See Details for more on using each inclusion argument.

unanswer_recode

Integer-like. Recode seen-but-unanswered (usually skipped) questions using this value. Defaults to NA

unanswer_recode_multi

Integer-like. Recode seen-but-unanswered multi-select questions (checkboxes) using this value. Defaults to value for unaswer_recode.

breakout_sets

Logical. If TRUE multi-value fields (e.g. each option of a multi-select multiple choice questions) will be returned as separate columns. If FALSE, will be returned as 1 column with each element containing all values.

import_id

Logical. If TRUE, column names will use Qualtrics import IDs (e.g. "QID123") instead of user-modifiable names (e.g. default names like "Q3" or custom names). Defaults to FALSE (user-modifiable names). Note that this also affects (otherwise unmodifiable) names of metadata columns--see the "include_metadata" section in Details below.

label

Logical. If TRUE (default), will return text of answer choices, instead of recoded values (FALSE).

convert

Logical. If TRUE, then the fetch_survey() function will convert certain question types (e.g. multiple choice) to proper data type in R. Defaults to TRUE.

add_column_map

Logical. Add an attribute to the returned response data frame containing metadata associated with the response download, including variable names, question/choice text, and Qualtrics import IDs. This column map can be subsequently obtained using extract_colmap() Defaults to TRUE.

add_var_labels

Logical. If TRUE, then the item description from each variable (equivalent to the one in the column map) will be added as a "label" attribute using sjlabelled::set_label(). Useful for reference as well as cross-compatibility with other stats packages (e.g., Stata, see documentation in sjlabelled). Defaults to TRUE.

col_types

Optional. This argument provides a way to manually overwrite column types that may be incorrectly guessed. Takes a readr::cols() specification. See example below and readr::cols() for formatting details. Defaults to NULL. Overwritten by convert = TRUE.

force_request

Logical. fetch_survey() saves each survey in a temporary directory so that it can quickly be retrieved later. If force_request is TRUE, fetch_survey() always downloads the survey from the API instead of loading it from the temporary directory. Defaults to FALSE.

verbose

Logical. If TRUE, verbose messages will be printed to the R console. Defaults to TRUE.

save_dir

String. Directory where survey results will be stored. Defaults to a temporary directory which is cleaned when your R session is terminated. This argument is useful if you'd like to store survey results. The downloaded survey will be stored as an RDS file (see base::readRDS()).

last_response

Deprecated.

Details

If the request to the Qualtrics API made by this function fails, the request will be retried. If you see these failures on a 500 error (such as a 504 error) be patient while the request is retried; it will typically succeed on retrying. If you see other types of errors, retrying is unlikely to help.

start_date & end_date arguments

The Qualtrics API endpoint for this function treats start_date and end_date slightly differently; end_date is exclusive, meaning only responses recorded up to the moment before the specified end_date will be returned. This permits easier automation; a previously-used end_date can become the start_date of a subsequent request without downloading duplicate records.

As a convenience for users working interactively, the qualtRics package also accepts Date(-like) input to each argument, which when used implies a time of 00:00:00 on the given date (and time zone). When a Date(-like) is passed to end_date, however, the date will be incremented by one before making the API request. This adjustment is intended to provide interactive users with more intuitive results; for example, specifying "2022/06/02" for both start_date and end_date will return all responses for that day, (instead of the zero responses that would return if end_date was not adjusted).

Inclusion/exclusion arguments

The three include_* arguments each have different requirements:

include_metadata

Elements must be one of the 17 Qualtrics metadata variables, listed here in their default order: StartDate (startDate), EndDate (endDate), Status (status), IPAddress (ipAddress), Progress (progress), Duration (in seconds) (duration), Finished (finished), RecordedDate (recordedDate), ResponseId (_recordId), RecipientLastName (recipientLastName), RecipientFirstName (recipientFirstName), RecipientEmail (recipientEmail), ExternalReference (externalDataReference), LocationLatitude (locationLatitude), LocationLongitude (locationLongitude), DistributionChannel (distributionChannel), UserLanguage (userLanguage).

Names in parentheses are those returned by the API endpoint when import_id is set to TRUE. The argument include_metadata can accept either format regardless of import_id setting, and names are not case-sensitive. Duplicate elements passed to include_metadata will be silently dropped, with the de-duplicated variable located in the first position.

include_questions

Qualtrics uniquely identifies each question with an internal ID that takes the form "QID" followed by a number, e.g. QID5. When using include_questions, these internal IDs must be used rather than user-customizable variable names (which need not be unique in Qualtrics). If needed, a column map linking customizable names to QID's can be quickly obtained by calling:

my_survey <- fetch_survey(
    surveyID = {survey ID},
    limit = 1,
    add_column_map = TRUE
)
extract_colmap(my_survey)

Note that while there is one QID for each "question" in the Qualtrics sense, each QID may still map to multiple columns in the returned data frame. If, for example, a "question" with ID QID5 is a multiple-choice item with a text box added to the third choice, the returned data frame may have two related columns: "QID5" for the multiple choice selection, and "QID5_3_TEXT" for the text box (or, more typically, their custom names). Setting include_questions = "QID5" will always return both columns. Similarly, "matrix" style multiple-choice questions will have a column for each separate row of the matrix. Also, when include_display_order = TRUE, display ordering variables for any randomization will be included. Currently, separating these sub-questions via the API does not appear possible (e.g., include_questions = "QID5_3_TEXT" will result in an API error).

include_embedded

This argument accepts the user-specified names of any embedded data variables in the survey being accessed.

See also

See https://api.qualtrics.com/ for documentation on the Qualtrics API.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
# Register your Qualtrics credentials if you haven't already
qualtrics_api_credentials(
  api_key = "<YOUR-API-KEY>",
  base_url = "<YOUR-BASE-URL>"
)

# Retrieve a list of surveys
surveys <- all_surveys()

# Retrieve a single survey
my_survey <- fetch_survey(surveyID = surveys$id[6])

my_survey <- fetch_survey(
  surveyID = surveys$id[6],
  save_dir = tempdir(),
  start_date = "2018-01-01",
  end_date = "2018-01-31",
  limit = 100,
  label = TRUE,
  unanswer_recode = 999,
  verbose = TRUE,
  # Manually override EndDate to be a character vector
  col_types = readr::cols(EndDate = readr::col_character())
)

}