SurveyMethods makes it easy to filter your survey results based on the date and time the survey was taken. For example, you may want to view survey responses during a specific month, or before and after a certain event. The SurveyMethods criteria function makes this easy to accomplish. The methodology varies slightly based on the report type you are using so we’ve included instructions below for each type of report.
For all of these reports, you will first need to make sure you are logged in to your SurveyMethods account and then navigate to the Analyze menu of the survey you wish to analyze using the icon (
Results Summary Report
Launch the Results Summary report from the reporting menu.
In the second section on the right side you will see a box called “Create Criteria”. Initially this box will show no active criteria, but if you’ve previously set up filters this section will show you how many filters are active.
To add a new filter, click “Create Criteria”.
In the top section, under the Criteria type, choose Date, Time – when the user took the survey.
The system will display another dropdown, “Where the respondent took the survey:”, allowing you to choose between “On”, “Before”, “After”, “In between the following dates/times”, or “During the past specified days” (e.g. last 30 days).
For our example, let’s say we want to filter for responses prior to February 15th. We will choose Before, and then set the date/time to February 15th, 2020 prior to 12:01am.
Once we’ve configured our criteria we can click Add Criteria to make it active. The system will display the criteria you have created down below.
If you want to add more criteria you can use this same process by selecting the criteria type. Once you’ve added criteria you can adjust the AND/OR settings to determine whether respondents need to meet ALL of the criteria or ANY of the criteria (or some combination).
When you’re done configuring your criteria, click Save and Exit to return to the report, which will now be filtered.
As you can see, the report shows 1 active criteria and the charts down below are only showing the 30 responses received prior to February 15th, rather than the full 44 responses.
Individual Results Report
Filtering the Individual Results report works the same way as the Results Summary report. Start by choosing the Individual Results report from the Reporting menu.
Below the response quotas section you will see whether any criteria are active, and in our case since there are not any active criteria we can scroll through the 44 total responses.
To filter this report, we can click the Create Criteria button to take us to the filtering menu. Let’s add the same filter as we did above for the Results Summary report. We’ll choose the date/time filter and set it to before February 15th at 12:01am. When we click Add Criteria, that will be added down below as an active criteria.
Clicking Save and Exit returns us to the report, and now we can scroll through the 30 responses prior to February 15th.
We can add more criteria by going back to the Create Criteria menu and following the same steps, using the AND and OR operators to set whether a response must meet all of the criteria or any of the criteria.
Quick Report Generator
You can also set up custom filters on your Quick Report Generator reports so that you can easily create reports filtered for different respondents and return to them as often as you like. First find the report you want to filter and then click the Edit icon on that row.
In the second section on the right side you will see a box called “Create Criteria”. Initially this box will show no active criteria, but if you’ve previously set up filters on this report in this section you will see how many filters are active.
To add a new filter, click “Create Criteria”. In the top section, under the Criteria type, choose Date, Time – When the user took the survey.
The system will display another dropdown, asking you how you would like to set the date/time filter. This time, let’s filter for responses between February 15th and March 15th. I’ll choose In between the following dates/times and set the from and to dates.
I then click Add Criteria to add it down below as an active criteria, and Save and Exit to return to the report with the filter applied. The same report is now visible but only for the 11 responses in the specified time frame.
Custom Report Builder
You can filter an existing report in the Custom Report Builder by clicking the Edit button on the report you wish to filter.
You can also create a new report and complete the 5-step wizard. Once you have finished the wizard and your draft report is displayed you can filter the report using the steps below.
Once your draft report is displayed, choose Data Filters under the Data Settings menu on the top left.
A dialog box will pop up with options for filtering your results by all responses or only complete or partial responses, or using criteria analysis.
The criteria menu works the same way as it does for the other reports. We’ll filter the report for responses prior to February 15th so we’ll first choose to filter by Date, Time – When the user took the survey.
Then we’ll choose Before and set the date to February 15th, 2020 at 12:01am.
When we click Add Criteria it will be added to the active criteria section.
When we click Exit we will return to the report with the filter applied.
You will see “Filter Applied” at the top left to indicate at least one filter is active. As shown above, the report now contains the 30 responses prior to February 15th rather than the 44 total responses.
We can click the “Filter Applied” link to view the active filters, or return to the Data Filters menu if we need to make changes.
With the Custom Report Builder you also have access to Segment analysis, which allows you to create segments from your data using similar filters. You can then create cross-tab reports using these segments to view how their responses compare. Visit our Custom Report Builder help article for more information.
Who Can Use This Feature?
This feature is available to all users. However, only Professional and Enterprise users can use the Quick Report Generator and Custom Report Builder.
Related Articles
Filter Survey Results Based on Responses to Questions
Filter Survey Results Based on Custom Field Values
Filter for Complete or Partial Responses Only
Results Summary Report
Individual Results Report
Quick Report Generator
Custom Report Builder