Virtual Questions

1. On the Results page, click the Data Lab tab in the left menu.
2. Click the Virtual Question bar to add a VQ to your report, or drag it into place between questions.

Note: A Virtual Question can be added at any point in your data no matter what questions they are pulling from.

1. Click the pencil icon in the upper right corner at any time to edit the name of your Virtual Question, and give it an optional description in the Start typing... text field.
2. Click the Single Choice drop-down to select the data output you’d like to aggregate, from Single choice, Multiple choice, Matrix single choice, or Open Ended.
   - Single choice and Multiple choice selections allow you to combine answer choices to create fewer answer "buckets" from existing single and multiple choice style questions, comparing these new categories to other new categories, or demographic traits.
   - Matrix single choice allows you to combine different questions from your survey, treating them each as "sub questions" - as though you originally asked the question as a Slider or Progressive Matrix - receiving output features like box scores, means, etc.
   - Open Ended allows you to place the responses to multiple Open Ended questions or answer options together, or even within a single word cloud.
3. Click the first drop-down in the A1. row to select a demographic trait or survey question.
4. Click the next drop-down to add further criteria to compare. For most questions types, click an answer option once to include (blue + ), twice to exclude (red -), or three times to reset to default.
5. Type a label for that element in the chart into the Please type a label... field.
6. Continue populating Answers, or at any time, click the box next to Everyone else to simply compare the specified parameters against all others in the survey. Each additional Answer row will create a new column in the resulting VQ chart.
7. Click Generate visualization.

After generating the chart, the VQ becomes an active part of your survey data exactly, like any other question; VQs are available for use in filtering, exports, and custom banners for Crosstab Analysis.

The following options will populate in the Optional Presets drop-down (as available) and can be used to quickly set parameters for a VQ. 

Group Logic: If a survey has [group] logic or you used Smart Loops to program your survey, VQ Optional Presets will detect the question nodes and look for comparable questions within each node. Questions display in this list only when each node is identical in structure (e.g.: the first question within each node is a single choice question with 5 answer options).

Top 1 or Top 2 Boxes: For certain question types, after you select the group, you will have the option to select Top 1 or Top 2 Boxes at either end of the answer list. We offer Top Box aggregation on both sides of the Likert scale to accommodate both directions you may have used while programming your survey.

The additional drop-downs will help you automatically populate labels and images (if applicable for your VQ answer variants.

• • • 'run' text: populates the number of the run in the Smart Loop
    • 'variable name' text: populates the text entered in the variable field used within the question set
    • Q text: this option will populate the full question text.
      Note: Make sure the Question numbers you select for the label match the question numbers selected as VQ answer options.
      
    • No images: populates answer options without images
    • auto images: populates any images associated with the questions or subquestions selected
    • Q images: populate a different set of images from other runs 

Prefix Groups: Within answer option lists of 5 or more, detects when the same word is used first in multiple answers (e.g. A1: ShinyGlow Shampoo, A2: ShinyGlow Conditioner).

Hashtag Groups: During survey programming, add a #label to multiple answer options within a list of 5 or more to group together certain answers (e.g. when the brand names are not listed in the answer option, add #brandA and #brandB, etc. as appropriate to populate these groups in the Optional Presets dropdown).

Nested Quotas:  If you created Nested Demographic Quotas on the Target Market page, each group created will populate as an answer line in a VQ. 

Note: only quota groups created on the Target Market page prior to launching the survey will be reflected in the Optional Presets. If quotas were changed or added during fielding they will need to be populated into the VQ manually. 

Demographic Traits: Demographics are available with every Panel survey, but the number and type varies by country. Preset demographic trait groups will automatically populate in the Optional Presets drop-down.

House Tags: If you used one of aytm's 2300+ House Tags to target your audience, those House tags will appear in VQ presets. This could be particularly helpful if you used the or operator with multiple House Tags, to compare how differently-qualified respondents performed in your survey.

Variables: You can append data as variables using our Custom Upload feature, and we provide data on device, browser, and platform as variables depending on the survey. All these variables will populate in the Optional Presets and can be used to populate a VQ. 

Learn more about Optional Presets.