10 easy steps.

You might like to print this guide so that you can refer to it while you’re using 1000Minds.

Preliminaries: Logging in & creating a decision model with descriptions of alternatives

Jump to the next (main) section if you’re familiar with these preliminary steps.

Go to www.1000minds.com and click log in. (If you don’t already have a 1000Minds user account, click trial at www.1000minds.com.)
Click All-Purpose Decision-Making or Conjoint Analysis or one of the other services on offer at the login page, as appropriate for your particular application.
Enter your username (usually your email address) and password. Click yes if you agree to the conditions of use.
To create a 1000Minds decision model – consisting of criteria, preference values (weights), alternatives, etc – click new decision model (or new choice model if you’re logged into the Conjoint Analysis service). This is the model you will use in the ranking survey (as in the next section).

For this new model, follow these steps in particular (near top of the screen): start / mode and alternatives (optional). (Depending on which service you’re logged into, instead of “alternative” you may see “patient”, “candidate”, “technology”, “concept”, “individual” or “entry”.)

At the start / mode step, give your model a name. At the alternatives (optional) step, enter descriptions of the alternatives you want to be ranked in the ranking survey (below). Do this by clicking new alternative. Give each alternative a name and either type in or copy and paste in notes or description for this alternative. These descriptions of the alternatives are what the survey participants will be asked to read and then rank (as in the next section). (For each alternative, don’t worry about rating it on the criteria or attributes – that’s a different activity.)

If you want to survey potentially 10s or 100s (even 1000s!) of participants, to discover their rankings of the alternatives you’ve entered, then go to processes (via the models / processes (home) page that you arrived at when you logged in). The next section explains how to create and administer a 1000Minds ranking survey.

Creating & administering a ranking survey

At the models / processes (home) page, click on the processes tab (to the right of the models tab), and then click new decision process (or new choice process if you're using the Conjoint Analysis service). Alternatively, if you’ve already engaged in other 1000Minds surveys or activities, you can open and simply add to them, as appropriate. In particular, you can use the same participants (i.e. ignore the next step) or add additional participants if you want to.
In your new decision process (for which you can enter your own process name), you will immediately see an activity that’s automatically included, entitled participants – involved in the decision process. This is where the names and email addresses of the participants in your survey will appear. As explained in detail below, there are two main approaches for entering them: (1) if you know participants’ names and email addresses, you can enter them into 1000Minds yourself (i.e. type or copy them in); and/or (2) participants can self-enrol for the survey from a sign-up webpage that you can easily create using 1000Minds. Depending on the circumstances of your survey, either approach can be used on its own or both approaches can be used together.

With respect to the first approach, you can enter participants’ names and email addresses by clicking the above-mentioned participants ‘activity’. You can enter each participant individually by clicking new participant (for example, you might like to enter your own name and email address to test this). Also, on the left-hand side of the participants page you’ll see import participants; by clicking this button and following the instructions, you can copy and paste in batches of participant names and email addresses (e.g. from WORD or Excel). You can enter additional participants at any time later on too.

With respect to the second approach, Step 7 below explains how at the email / webpage page you can create a sign-up webpage for enabling new participants to self-enrol for the survey. After they’ve self-enrolled, they will also appear at participants (just like the ones you entered, as explained above).
Next, click add activity at the process activities page, and then ranking survey. (The other 1000Minds activities that are on offer pertain to different aspects of a possible overall decision process; for more information, see www.1000minds.com/solutions/processes.)
After your new ranking survey (created at the previous step) opens at the ranking survey page, it is very important that the selected model for survey there (specifiable by you) is the one you want to use for surveying your participants. You need to make sure that it is the one you worked on with respect to specifying the criteria to be evaluated (the 5^th bullet point above). This selected model for survey can’t be changed once participants have started the survey. (If you've not already created a model to use as your selected model for survey, return to the 4^th and 5^th bullet points above and create a model and enter the criteria to be included in the survey.)

You can also edit the brief instructions to participants – e.g. by setting a date/time that you’d like them to finish the survey by, etc. (The messages you want to include there, and in the other text boxes, are up to you; they are specific to the application you’re working on, and perhaps to the survey participants too.) When you’re ready, activity status should be “open for survey”.
Also at the ranking survey page, if it’s useful to you, you can use the message when participants finish survey space to embed a Google Docs survey into your 1000Minds survey. This extra survey – which, as far as participants are concerned, will be seamlessly joined to their 1000Minds survey – is for participants to answer after they’ve answered the 1000Minds questions, such as for collecting their socio-demographic data or other information that you are interested in. Other online survey tools (other than Google Docs) can be embedded in a similar fashion. Detailed instructions for how to embed a Google Docs survey appear in the help tips on the left-hand side (see more there) of the ranking survey page. This feature is also available if you are emailing participants to invite them to do a ranking survey (explained next).
At the email / webpage page, you will be offered two means for distributing the survey: (1) by emailing participants directly, and/or (2) by creating a sign-up webpage for participants to self-enrol for the survey (explained at the next step). As mentioned at Step 2 above, depending on the circumstances of your survey, either approach can be used on its own or both approaches can be used together.

If you know everyone’s name and email, it’s better to email participants directly – using the names and email addresses you entered at participants (Step 2 above). (You can add additional participants at any time by clicking the participants button on the left-hand side of the email / webpage page.) Then, all you have to do in this respect at the email / webpage page is to make sure that the participants you want to send emails to are ticked.

You can edit the subject (in the email header) and the email message inviting participants to participate in the survey. (Later on, as discussed at Step 8 below, you can also send reminder emails to participants who have not completed their surveys via this facility – but with an up-dated email message.)

In the email message it’s important that you don’t change these text variables: {fullname}; {url}; {reply-to}. These variables are used by 1000Minds for data it uses to personalise the message to each participant; thus, each email is personally addressed to {fullname}, and each participant will get their own {url} in their personal email, etc.

Before sending out the emails, if you want to experience what participants will experience themselves (e.g. as a pre-test that you have everything the way you want it), go to participant progress, and click impersonate this participant (i.e. anyone). This way, in effect, you can ‘be’ that participant (i.e. see what he or she will see when the survey starts). Another simple test is to include your own email address, and simply send an email (as explained next) to yourself – and see how the email appears to you, etc.

When you are ready – i.e. you are confident that you have the correct set of participants (see send emails to), the correct model (see selected model for survey), and you’re happy with the subject and your email message – click send emails (halfway down the email / webpage page). Personalised emails are sent to participants individually and addresses aren't revealed.
In addition to emailing participants directly (as above), also at the email / webpage page, instead of entering the names and email addresses of the people you want to survey – or as well (i.e. you can use both approaches together if that's appropriate) – you can create a sign-up webpage where new participants can self-enrol for the survey. Scroll to the bottom of the email / webpage page and tick enable new participants to self-enrol for the survey from a sign-up webpage.

This approach to distributing the survey has the advantage that you don’t need to know participants’ names and email addresses (though, as mentioned in the previous step, you can still administer the survey this way if you like). This is great for ‘snowball’ or ‘convenience’ sampling, for example. All you need to do is email the link to the sign-up webpage – created by 1000Minds (see get sign-up web address) – to prospective participants. You can do this via your own means of distributing emails. Or you might put the link on a webpage of your own (or on Face Book, etc) and direct traffic to there.

To create a sign-up webpage, scroll down the email / webpage page and tick enable new participants to self-enrol for the survey from a sign-up webpage, and follow the instructions from there.

In addition – though most users won’t be interested in this feature – it’s possible to embed a unique User ID in the sign-up webpage link referred to above. This can be useful, for example, if you have a sample of survey participants who are known to you but who you don’t want to have to enter their names (e.g. for anonymity reasons, and also for convenience perhaps). For detailed instructions about how to do this email enquiries@1000minds.com and we’ll help you implement this (note though, as alluded to above, this feature is likely to be useful only in exceptional circumstances).
After having emailed participants directly (Step 6) and/or created a sign-up webpage (Step 7), as time passes (e.g. later in the week) it’s a good idea to check on the progress of your survey participants. Do this by going (returning) to processes (as before, via the models / processes page), clicking on your process name, and then selecting your ranking survey. Click participant progress and/or survey results to see how participants are getting on.
You can also send reminder emails to participants who have not started or completed their surveys via the email / webpage page (as mentioned earlier) – but this time with an up-dated email message reminding participants to start or finish their surveys. You can also see how participants are getting on with their surveys (and also email them easily – e.g. perhaps to thank them) via the distribution lists button on the left-hand side of the email / webpage and participant progress pages.
When the survey is finished (e.g. the closing date has passed) – or, indeed, at any time – you can see participants’ results at the survey results page. These results can be opened or saved as spreadsheets (click open / save in Excel on the left-hand side of the specific result pages) for further analysis, etc

Good Luck!
(If you have any problems, email enquiries@1000minds.com and we will help you.)