[WEB4LIB] Allowing only Unique Survey Responses

[Darryl Friesen]

> Has anyone ever put a survey on the Web and somehow controlled so that each
> person who fills it out, can only do so once, so as not to skew the results?
> I'm thinking the only way to do this would be to distribute "keys" in the
> form of a unique password that once used becomes disabled...any other ideas?

Depends who your audience is.  We do online voting on our Intranet.  The
software can get the username from the login and only allow the person to cast
a single ballot.

If your scope is wider than staff, you could try email address (although I've
probably got a dozen myself, as I'm sure most of you do), IP address (probably
no good for people using a proxy server) or maybe cookies.

You could have people register first (maybe with an email verification) to try
an eliminiate duplicates, but then it might be too complicated, and people may
shy away from filling out the survey.

Not really any help, was I.  :)


- Darryl

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   Darryl Friesen, B.Sc., Programmer/Analyst    Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
   Consulting & Development                     http://gollum.usask.ca/
   Department of Computing Services                 163 Murray Building
   University of Saskatchewan                              Main Library
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