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).
Watch the interactive walkthrough below for an overview of the Grid Task type.
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, or on a per column basis. Enabling this option allows you to customize the commentary prompt, and determine if a comment is optional or required.
Column and Row Configuration
You can choose to add and build out your Grid's columns and rows 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
Enable / disable Response commentary - when Response Commentary is enabled, each Column setup will include a Response Commentary toggle.
This option is turned on by default and is indicated visually for each column with a commentary icon. Toggling this option off will disable Response Commentary for that particular column.
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 overall qualitative component, a text field can be set to display below the Grid to Capture additional commentary. Once enabled, this option allows you to customize the commentary prompt, make the Response required and enforce a word count, and allow text formatting.
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!
Additional Settings
As with other Task types in Recollective, researchers can take advantage of several additional setting options when configuring a Grid task:
Completion Requirement: Beneath the task name, the Required Task toggle determines whether the task is mandatory. When enabled, participants must complete the task. When disabled, the task is optional and can be skipped. For optional tasks, the Ask for reason if skipped setting is available to prompt participants to provide a reason when skipping the task.
Block Pasting: To discourage participants from using generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT) to complete tasks, admins can enable Block pasting of external content. This prevents participants from pasting text copied from outside sources into their responses.
Point Customization: If the Points feature is enabled for the study, admins can enable Customize points awarded for task completion to assign a custom point value. The custom value can be set higher or lower than the default points awarded for the task type.
Task Visibility: Admins can restrict which participants are permitted to view and complete the task. Task Visibility settings can be used to limit access based on a participant segment, previous task responses, previous task completion, or overall activity completion.
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