Hi, I am writing you to get some advice for launching my survey again after the pilot.
Luckily I won't need to make major changes (order, adding or deleting questions). However, after revising my pilot data I realised that I need to make tiny changes in certain questions (modifying the possible answers, adding categories, change quotas).
I would like to be able to access the old pilot questionnaire sawtooth file (just for the record), and also have the new file that derives from my previous project so I don't need to build everything from scratch.
I have tried to use "save as" to give a new name to the sawtooth file (.ssi), but when I open it in the browser, the formatting of the website (template and sections details) has been lost.
The second option, is to make one copy of the current file (extension .ssi), do the changes needed in the old file (.ssi) and then to launch the survey again. However, I was wondering if the program will crash when trying to collect the new data from fieldwork (using the URL) because the number of categories or names will differ. Is there any way to make this compatible? Or do you recommend me to do the changes, reset the survey fieldwork (so there is no old data accumulated) and then merge them together when I have both datasets (pilot and final survey?
If I do reset my survey, is there any way to make the first response number 62 and not 1 (so I don't get confused on the data analysis?
Finally,the company that gave me the panel data did a pause on the fieldwork, so I am guessing that is also better to keep the same URL and configuration?