Grouping and Randomizing Tasks
During Activity Setup, there is an option at the bottom of the form to Randomize Tasks with two options:
- Do not randomize tasks (this is the default)
- Randomize tasks not locked into position
If you choose the second option, Recollective will randomize the presentation of the Tasks in the Activity (except those locked in place) to participants during its completion. It's very useful to eliminate completion bias, particularly when presenting a series of similar images or concepts.
The random ordering of Tasks is experienced by participants only while completing the Activity. The responses to the randomized Tasks will appear in the Stream in the order they were experienced by each participant. In all other cases, the Tasks will appear in their configured order.
Locking Task Position
Sometimes it's necessary to randomize the presentation of Tasks, but have some locked into place. A typical example is where you want a Prompt Task to remain at the start of the Activity to provide instructional information to participants before they begin.
To achieve this, first create your Tasks. When complete, you will see there are two interchanging arrows below each Task card in the Activity. If you click on the arrows of any given Task, Recollective will lock that Task in place.
Grouped Task Randomization
Multiple groups of Tasks can even be randomized while keeping the Tasks in sequence. This option is great for concept testing where you have a set of multiple exercises or questions per concept but still want to remove order bias in terms of concept presentation.
Simply drag Task cards onto each other to group them (you'll have to also provide a label for the group). The grouped Tasks card will show how many Tasks the group is composed of along with a drop down arrow to access its options menu (e.g. Preview, Copy, Rename, etc.).
If you click into a group, its composite Tasks will be displayed in full. The Tasks will be locked by default to keep their ordered sequence but the same randomization controls are offered at this level as well.