Data Loss of questions in section after completing following section and syncing

#1

Hi

I have been receiving reports of interviewers experiencing data loss of some questions in a section after they complete the following section and sync their data.

The data seems to be lost during the synchronization process.Interviews are fine on the tablet but arrive on the server with data loss.

Basically lets say we have 2 sections with 3 subsections.

Section 1 Section 2
1A 2A
1B 2B
1C 2C
Interviewer completes all questions and subsections in Section 1 then complete and sync - No Data Loss

Interviewer completes all questions and subsections in Section 1 and Section 2 then complete and sync - Data loss in Section 1C

Interviewer completes all questions and subsections in Section 1 then complete and sync.Supervisor reviews and rejects interview then interviewer completes Section 2 then complete and sync - Data loss in section 1C.

Saw instances where data was partially lost in the subsection and other instances where all data was lost in the subsection.

I will working with the interviewers more closely to find out if its the completion of a specific question/ subsection or the entire section triggers data loss in the unrelated section.

The questionnaire compiles without any errors in the designer.

An almost exact clone of this questionnaire(the sections with the issues are an exact clone) is used in 2 other countries and the interviewers in these countries have not experienced these issues.

Anyone has any idea what could be causing this issue?

#2

To avoid miscommunication with the interviewers or their misunderstanding of the program, try to reproduce the problem based on the description you have on the demo server.
https://support.mysurvey.solutions/headquarters/config/demo-server/

Once you reproduce the problem, contact support with the information according to the green list: https://support.mysurvey.solutions/faq/issue-reporting/

#3

@gamilp, did you manage to reproduce the issue?

#4

Hi, I was able to reproduce this issue and found out what was going on.There wasnt any data loss.

Answering a question in the section was enabling a section of new questions in the previous section.Probably because of the amount of time that may pass between completing each section, the interviewers were thinking that this newly enabled section had already been completed and the data was deleted when infact they never entered any data for it because it was disabled when they first completed the section.

#5

Yes, this is possible and Survey Solutions automatically detects this as a potential problem indicating it with a warning in the Designer:

[WB0251]:Enablement condition refers to a future question. Consider reversing the order.

But people don’t read the warnings. So don’t blame the interviewers.