Rapid Association questions are used to collect impressions of visual stimuli in a timed environment. Respondents are shown stimuli and asked whether various term associations fit or do not fit. By collecting choice data with a predetermined time pressure, you can capture the fast, automatic, and intuitive System 1 thinking, which may better mimic the quick, real-life, minimal-effort decisions respondents make in real shopping situations.

Want to learn more about our question types? Enroll in our Question Types Overview course in the Lighthouse Academy!

Adding Rapid Association Questions

1. In the Survey Editor, click the Add new question button displayed after the last question, and select the Rapid Association question type from the menu.
2. Click the camera icon in the question field to upload the image from your hard drive to which your respondents will react.
3. Type or paste up to 20 attributes in the Word fields for respondents to react to the image, or click the Or add from library of words dropdown to select from a list of common attributes.
4. Click the Randomization checkbox to turn off randomization — it is enabled by default, as it is the recommended setting.

⚠️ Note: Any text added in the Question field will not be shown to respondents. If you need to provide context for the Rapid Association, add Instruction Text prior to the question.

Customizing Rapid Association Controls

1. Click the Image exposure dropdown to set the length of time respondents are exposed to the image, between 2 and 45 seconds.
2. Click the next dropdown to select whether each attribute will be shown once or three times.
3. Click the for: dropdown and select the duration each attribute will be shown on screen, from 1 to 5 seconds.
4. Click the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down dropdown to choose how respondents can react to an attribute: Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down, Yes/No, Match/Not Match, Fit/Not Fit, or the disagreement-first presentation of each set. The word listed first reflects which button displays on the left.
5. Click the Training dropdown to give respondents the opportunity to view instructions and practice before the programmed questions. By default, training is set to auto (shown only in the first Rapid Association question a respondent sees). Choose always on to show training in every instance, or always off to never show it.

💡 Tip: The shorter the attribute display time, the more likely System 1 thinking is captured. Training is adaptive — if a respondent is on mobile, they'll see the appropriate training for their device, without key inputs as options.

⚠️ Note: If words are shown three times, choice data and reaction times aggregate across the three to represent an individual respondent's overall average choice. Showing the word multiple times can increase speed or influence answers in subsequent viewings, but also allows validation that the first choice was not made in error. Showing the word once reduces potential carry-over effects.

Analyzing Rapid Association Results

On the Results page, results display a bar graph with the percentage of respondents whose aggregate response was positive (whether Fit, Thumbs Up, Yes, or Match) for each word.

1. Click the dropdown to alternatively view the data as a Stacked bar chart showing the percentage of all three options (Fit, Not fit, and timeouts/missing data), or select Scatter Plot to visualize each word along the x-axis by average reaction time and percentage indicating Fit along the y-axis.
2. Click the Export button in the left-hand Results navigation menu and select Excel with coded map to download a spreadsheet with aggregate data, Value (choice data), Time (reaction time), and Position (order in which words were seen) for each word presented. Each additional Rapid Association question will have its own tab in the exported document.