Task Type: Grid

Grid is a Task Type that presents the participant with a matrix of rows and columns. Participants provide a response by making a selection in each row (by default). Grids can also be customized to control how many columns or rows must be selected in a response for more refined question scenarios like the one below.

Overall Options

The options menu at the top of this Task's Setup page will allow you to configure the Grid in a variety of different ways. All options are disabled by default. 

• Multiple choice: Allows multiple columns to be selected for each row. (e.g. imagine a case where the columns are brands and the rows are attributes, each attribute might apply to multiple brands) Enabling this option also allows you to enforce a limit on how many columns can be selected per row. 
• Forced ranking: Allows each column to be selected only once across all rows. Enabling this option also allows you to customize the Help prompt participants will see if they attempt to assign a column to more than one row.
• Limit responses: All rows are required unless a limit is defined (e.g. imagine a case where maybe 20 rows or product elements are listed but the question asks participants to only select and categorize the 5 most important elements.) Enabling this allows you to set a custom limit on how many rows are required.
• Response commentary: Allows participants to leave a comment per row. Enabling this options allows you to customize the commentary prompt, and determine if a comment is optional or required. There is also an option to allow a comment per row only if the last column is selected.

Column and Row Configuration

You can choose to add and build out your Grid's rows and labels individually or paste them in bulk with the Paste Columns and Paste Rows options. Similar to Poll Task choices, a Grid Task's Columns and Rows are plain text labels by default, but clicking Show formatting options gives you access to the text editor so you can format these as desired, or even include media. 

In terms of additional customization options for Columns, you can:

• Randomize their presentation - if selected, there's an option to anchor the last column in place

In terms of additional customization for Rows, you can:

• Randomize their presentation - if selected, there's an option to keep the last row in place
• Allow participants to add more rows - if selected, you can enforce minimum and / or maximum limits on extra rows as well as enforce a word count in terms of their labelling

Weighting

The Grid Task also allows you to make use of an optional column weighting per row. In cases where your columns represent a numeric scale (e.g. Likert scale), you can provide a more qualitative text-based label and input the numeric value in the weighting field as shown below.

Upon the Task's completion, you'll be provided with average weightings per individual row element of your Grid. Imagine the first row element in your Grid Task ( Product Element A) is rated as Very Important a total of 3 times, Somewhat Important a total of 5 times and Not Important a total of 2 times. In this example the Product Element A row would have an average weighting of 3.4 since:

• The Very Important column is worth 5 and was selected 3 times (5 x 3 = 15)
• The Somewhat Important column is worth 3 and was selected 5 times (3 x 5 = 15)
• The Not Important column is worth 2 and was selected 2 times (2 x 2 = 4)
• The total weight of Product Element A is therefore 15 + 15 + 4 = 34
• The Grid was done by 10 participants so the average weight is 34 / 10 = 3.4 

Setting up your Grid Tasks in this fashion is ideal for these types of circumstances as you can simply order your row elements by average weighting when analyzing the results.

Commenting Options

To add an additional qualitative component, a text field can be set to display for each row that includes at least one column selection using the Allow a comment per row control. Once enabled, this option can be customized so that the commenting option is only made available if the last column is selected. You can customize the prompting verbiage and enforce a word count with regards to row comments.

Despite the complexity of this Task type, Recollective automatically adapts the exercise to fit on all screen sizes. You may wish to preview the Task on a mobile device to become familiar with the mobile version of the Task.

For more information on how to leverage the Grid Task Type within your research, make sure to check out our Spotlight: Grid Task blog article!