Hack Your Survey: Techniques to Take Full Control over Your Data Collection

Success pages

Most survey platforms lock you into their UI. We publish our JSON format openly. Edit surveys in VS Code, generate them programmatically, store them in Git — whatever works for your workflow.

This guide covers collection-level settings you can enable by editing survey JSON directly. These features give fine-grained control over question ordering and navigation.

How to Edit Survey JSON

Navigate to the Import / Export tab in the editor. Copy the JSON to your preferred code editor or export it to a file. Make your changes, then paste the JSON back or import the file to update the survey.

LLMs are particularly effective at this. Paste your JSON into ChatGPT or Claude and ask for specific changes like “shuffle the second collection” or “add pagination”. They handle the structure reliably.

Collection-Level Settings

Collections can be configured with special properties that affect how questions are displayed and how respondents move through them. These settings live directly on the collection object in your survey JSON.

Shuffle: Randomize Question Order

Randomizes question order for each respondent to reduce order bias. Each respondent gets a consistent random order that persists across page refreshes.

When to use:

  • A/B tests where question order might influence answers
  • Surveys with many similar questions to avoid pattern-based responses
  • Reducing primacy and recency effects in rating scales

How to enable:

{
    "collections": [
        {
            "id": "my-collection",
            "shuffle": true,
            "elements": [
                /* Your questions here */
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Shuffle + Limit: Random Sampling from a Question Pool

Combine shuffle with limit to show each respondent a random subset of questions from a larger pool.

When to use:

  • Large question banks where answering everything would be overwhelming
  • “Answer 5 out of 20” style surveys
  • Sampling across many similar items without increasing survey length

How to enable:

{
    "collections": [
        {
            "id": "my-collection",
            "shuffle": true,
            "limit": 5,
            "elements": [
                /* 20 questions total, each respondent sees 5 random ones */
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Step: Pagination (Wizard Mode)

Controls how many elements show at once. Respondents complete each step before moving on.

When to use:

  • Breaking long collections into smaller chunks
  • Classic “wizard” experiences (one question at a time)

How to enable:

{
    "collections": [
        {
            "id": "my-collection",
            "step": 1,
            "elements": [
                /* Your questions here */
            ]
        }
    ]
}
  • step: 1 — one question per page
  • step: 3 — three questions per page