Do you know that your respondents will most likely be using the same device to answer, e.g. a shared home computer or a public library device? Is a researcher filling out the survey with several participants, each time using the same device? In these cases, you may want to add a session reset parameter (aka reset link) to your survey URL to avoid data being overwritten.
Why is this important?
The Maintain respondent session setting – which is on by default in every survey – makes it possible for the same respondent to fill out the survey in several sessions without losing their responses or showing as multiple respondents in your results file. However, sometimes this setting may actually cause problems, if different respondents are using the same browser and device to respond.
In this case, you want to go around the Maintain respondent session setting – the session reset parameter allows you to do just this! When a questionnaire is reset, a new respondent ID is created in the results and the new respondent will see an empty questionnaire. Even if multiple respondents are responding on the same device, if they are loading the survey using an URL with the parameter, our system recognizes them as individuals.
How do I use the session reset parameter?
Simply add the ending ?reset=true to the questionnaire URL. For example, if your questionnaire URL was
https://app.maptionnaire.com/q/qwertyzxcvb
you could turn it into a reset link by adding ?reset=true to the end:
https://app.maptionnaire.com/q/qwertyzxcvb?reset=true
Frequently Asked Questions:
The Maintain respondent session setting is still useful to keep turned on because you may have respondents who use their own device and want to fill out the survey in several sessions. The main difference between using Maintain respondent session and the reset link function is in how Maptionnaire behaves when the respondent loads the page:
| Setting combination | First page load | Later page reload |
| Maintain respondent session on + reset link | New respondent | Existing respondent |
| Maintain respondent session off + reset link | New respondent | New respondent |
| Maintain respondent session on + normal link | Existing respondent | Existing respondent |
| Maintain respondent session off + normal link | New respondent | New respondent |
You can, but it's not a 100% sure way of resetting the browser session. To be on the safe side, use a reset parameter.
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