Adding Concepts

This article will teach you how to create and assign a concept, as well as what each option in the concept interface can do.

See the following articles if you have not already:

Background

Concepts are an important part of the system. It can be used for any of the following reasons: 

  • Your survey has a setup where you have 20 concepts/brands to be evaluated and you want each person to get 5 of them to evaluate throughout the survey. The system can assign them for you using a number of different criteria such as: 
    • least fill
    • balanced by a variable such as nested gender and age so you can get the best distribution of assignment
    • balancing by position
  • If you have 3 groups in which a respondent is categorized into but in the end you only want them to count for one by least fill. 

Adding a Concept

  1. Now that you are in the Build & Edit, go to the question tree on the left hand side of the screen - and click on the 'CONCEPTS' button. 
  2. Then click on the 'ADD CONCEPT GROUP' button. 
  3. You will be prompted to name your concept. This will be the stem of a numeric variable.  For example, if you name it "CONCEPTS", the variables created will be "CONCEPTS_X" where X is the value of each concept in the list. After you have named it, you can give it an optional label for data files and then click "CREATE".
  4. Next you can populate the list of all eligible concepts.  You can paste in the list, manually type them in, use the generate concepts/Response from Image or add new concept.
  5. The basic Concept setup is complete. 

Overall Qualification Criteria

Next you will need to set up the criteria for the assignment.

  1. COUNT RANGE: This determines how many concepts should be chosen during the assignment.  If the max is greater than the min, the logic blocks will execute until they achieve the max, or until all logic has been exhausted if the max is not achieved.
  2. TERM IF NOT MIN: If there is the potential that the minimum number of concepts is not reached, and this is also qualifying criteria for the study you will need to enable this toggle. If this toggle is not enabled and there is no terminate logic in regular page logic preventing respondents from continuing with no concepts they will be allowed to proceed with no concepts (or not enough) assigned.
    1. Toggle on the 'TERM IF NOT MIN' field 
    2. From the drop-down below the toggle, click '+ New Code' 
    3. Enter the name of the termination code you want to use & Click 'Create'

    1. When you see your term code appear in the list, select it.
  3. BALANCE BY POSITION: If you are assigning more than 1 concept, this feature will be available.  This allows all concepts being chosen to be assigned equal times across all positions. This works on an overall level and you can simply toggle it on or off by clicking on the circle. 
  4. LIMITED SETS: If you are assigning multiple concepts and there are pairs or groups of concepts that cannot be chosen together you will specify that here. You must list them out in comma delimited list.  Click the + each time you want to add an additional combination.  Click the - if you need to remove a combination. 
    1. Examples: 
      • Lets say you do not want 1 and 2 to be selected together. In this case you want to pick 1 from 1 and 2. 
      • Lets say you wanted to choose 2 from 3, 4 and 5 

Qualifications Blocks

Background
You can setup as many Qualification Blocks as needed for your project. Please keep in mind there is a priority. For example, if you have 20 concepts and you have 5 logic blocks, the logic blocks will run from top to bottom until the needed number of concepts assigned has been met. If you have all the items needed after block number two has run, the following blocks (3-5) will not be taken into account. 

Setting Up a Qualification Block

  1. Here you will determine what concepts are eligible. Just like when using regular logic, you can RUN drop-down to indicate how these are to operate:
    1. 'ALWAYS' or 
    2. 'CONDITIONALLY'  
  2. Then you will put the qualifying statement in the 'QUALIFICATION FORMULA' box.  
  3. MAX TO ASSIGN: If you want to put a cap on how many can be chosen within a specific block of logic you would enter a value here, otherwise leave blank. Example:  Only choose 2 brands respondent is aware of at Q2.
  4. BALANCE BY POSITION: This allows you to prioritize concept positions per block. There are two very important things to be mindful when using this option. 
    1. You CANNOT use the overall Balance by Positions AND the qualification block level Balance by Positions at the same time. Its either one or the other, not both. 
    2. The assignment by position is done by block. For example, if you have 20 concepts and you have 5 logic blocks, the logic blocks will run from top to bottom until the needed number of concepts assigned has been met. If you have all the items needed after block number two has run, the following blocks (3-5) will not be taken into account. If you have 10 positions you are trying to balance, Block 1 will try to balance 1-10. If you only have 3 assigned, Block 2 will then try to balance positions 4-10. This pattern continues until all concepts are assigned OR if all the blocks have been used. 
  5. PRIORITIZE: You can decide how the selection process works when respondents qualify for multiple concepts.  
    1. Random would be like rolling a dice.  
    2. Least filled will do the counts on an overall level. 
    3. Balance will do a least fill on a specific variable or question (you will be prompted to choose in a drop down box) and 
    4. List will allow you to specify a priority order.  Both Least Filled and Balance will prompt you to choose by Number or Percentage. 
      • Number is the based on the exact count of how many we have of each concept whereas percentage is based on what percentage of the quota is full (in the event there are different quota limits).  In order to use percentage, quota limits must be defined for the concept.
      • This can be a comma delimited list (1,2,3,4,5,6,11,15,18)
      • You can also use an ellipses to truncate (1...6,11,15,18). This supports ascending and descending orders as well (1...5 as well as 5...1). 
  6. BREAK TIES: In the event the prioritize logic yields a tie you can specify how you want the ties to be broken. For example, if prioritize is using balance, it may make sense to apply Least Filled as the tie breaker.  

NOTE: If additional steps are required click on "+ QUALIFICATION" for additional steps.

Using Logic to Evaluate your Concept

Now that your concept is added, you will need to add in a logic statement to evaluate it. In either page logic or logic block pages you will select your condition and then from the drop down choose 'Evaluate Concept' followed by selecting the concept you wish to evaluate.

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