Distributing the inquiry via the Designer

You can distribute the inquiry in various ways and it is up to you to select what fits best in your situation.

You can use the Sprockler app, the online link or a paper-based version. What works best depends on your situation. There are also several ways of how to invite participants to participate:

App collector:

  • Downloading the inquiry on your own device. You can use the Interviewer code to download the inquiry on your own device. With this device, you can go around and interview respondents.

  • Storytellers download the app. You can also ask participants to download the app themselves. Give them the above instructions on finding the app on the Google Play Store or App Store and provide them with the accurate code to access the specific inquiry.

  • Interviewers download it on their devices. It is also possible that several interviewers go around and interview storytellers. They can download the app and the specific inquiry onto their device and go around. They must of course use the interviewer code. It is also possible to include some questions in your inquiry that must be filled in by the interviewer rather than the storytellers. Examples of such questions could be asked for the name of the interviewer or the location of the interview.

Web collector:

  • Sending link through email. As explained, you find the Collector codes on the ‘Inquiry Details’ tab of the Designer, under ‘Participation Codes’. You can access the web collector by clicking on the code of your liking, Personal or Interviewer. This brings you to the webpage. You can copy the URL and paste it in the email you are sending to your respondents.

  • Inviting respondents to participate via Sprockler. It is also possible to send emails inviting people to participate through Sprockler. Go to the ‘Publication’ tab in the Designer and scroll down below your number of seals. You can invite people to participate in your inquiry or invite people to interview others. You have the option to personalise the email sent yourself. You can keep track of how many people are invited to participate under ‘Details’. Once the participants have responded or interviewers have interviewed participants, you will see the numbers of participants with submitted responses and the total numbers. There is also a feature where you can send invitations to participate to participants and can check afterwards how many of them have responded to this, without compromising on anonymity, see below.

Paper version:

  • Printing the inquiry. Of course, it is also possible to print the inquiry and present paper versions to storytellers. The easiest way to access the plain text version of the inquiry is to make an Excel download of the responses and go to the second tab of the Excel file titled 'Questions'. Here you will find all the questions used in the inquiry, which you can copy into a Word document.

Pros and cons The Sprockler app can be used both online and offline and has easy integrated audio recording options. The online link can be easily used by everyone but requires an Internet connection. The paper-based version is friendly to the digitally-averse but requires someone to enter the information digitally afterwards to be able to visualise the data.

Inviting participants and interviewers through Sprockler

It is possible to send invitations to participants and interviewers through Sprockler. This can be done under the 'Publication' tab of the inquiry in the Designer.

If you scroll down on the 'Publication' tab, you see that you can invite a new interviewer there. You can simply enter their email address and invite them. You can personalise the email they will receive to your own liking.

If you scroll further down, you will also find how to invite participants through the Sprockler software. You can add participants by adding their email addresses and personalise the email that is sent to them through Sprockler. Below you can see a list of the number of participants that have been invited and that have submitted responses. In case some participants have submitted several responses, you can also see the total of responses received.

It is possible to send reminder emails to the participants that haven't submitted answers yet. In the Sprockler software, it is not possible to see who has submitted a response and who has not, as this information is always kept secret to protect the anonymity of our users (apart from of course if you add a question asking for identifying characteristics). However, our software is capable of recognising who has replied and who hasn't and can send a reminder only to those who haven't completed the inquiry yet.

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