Managing long or complex activities in Citizen Space

In Citizen Space, long and/or complex activities can be powerful for gathering detailed insights, but they require careful planning and management.

This article outlines how to design and manage long or complex activities effectively so you can maximise engagement while maintaining high-quality responses.

Long activities:

Long activities can be valuable when you need detailed feedback, but they also come with higher risks around completion rates, data quality, and respondent fatigue. Managing them carefully will help you get the insights you need without overwhelming participants.

What to consider when designing a long activity:

• Get your analysts prepared: Decide what data you need before launching and get your team of analysts ready to analyse, report and moderate responses (if using Response Publishing).
• Be intentional about length: Only include questions that directly support your objectives. If a question won’t meaningfully inform your decisions, consider removing it.
• Set expectations upfront: Let respondents know approximately how long the activity will take. This helps them decide when to start and reduces drop-offs partway through.
• Break content into sections: Group related questions into clear, labelled pages, and let respondents know beforehand (on the overview page) what sections/pages they can expect to complete. This makes the activity feel more manageable and helps respondents understand their progress during.
• Prioritise question types: Use qualitative questions (e.g. radio buttons, multiple choice etc.) where possible, and reserve open-text questions for when you truly need detailed, qualitative input. Long free-text responses can be time-consuming for respondents and harder to analyse.

• Highlight saving and returning: Mention the save and return feature in your overview page so respondents know that they can complete the activity in multiple sittings.
• Test the experience: Before publishing, test the activity yourself (and ideally with colleagues) to sense-check timing, clarity, flow, activity/site performance, as well as how the activity will work and look across different devices.
• Make documents to be commented on easily accessible: If you have documents and other files you want respondents to engage with, give feedback or commentary on, make these files easily accessible by linking or embedding them on their relevant activity pages, instead of having them only on the overview page.
• Monitor responses after launch: If you use google analytics or any other analytics tool with Citizen Space, keep an eye on completion rates and drop-off points. If many respondents abandon the activity at a specific section, it may indicate confusion or fatigue.
• Consider a non-linear structure: A non-linear survey would give respondents the option to complete activity pages which are relevant to them. This can help to reduce overwhelm and make the activity feel more manageable.

Finally, if your activity is particularly long, consider whether it could be split into multiple shorter activities or a phased engagement process instead. This can make participation more accessible and improve overall response quality.

Complex structures:

Some activities require more advanced or layered activity designs which often use skip logic. While this structure can help you capture more tailored and relevant data, it can also introduce additional complexity for respondents and administrators.

What to consider when working with complex structures:

• Plan ahead: Think about how the data will be used before you build the activity. Planning your structure, question order, answer components to be used, and reporting needs in advance will help you avoid unnecessary questions, reduce reworking later, and ensure the activity is fit for purpose from the start. In the early drafting stage of your activity, you can also reach out to Delib for assistance.
• Use skip logic thoughtfully: Skip logic is powerful, but overusing it can lead to confusion or unintended gaps in data. Make sure each condition is necessary and clearly aligned with your objectives.
• Avoid unnecessary branching: If multiple pathways lead to very similar questions, consider whether they can be combined. Reducing duplication makes the activity easier to maintain and analyse.
• Test every possible path: Before publishing, thoroughly test all skip logic routes and combinations of answers. This helps catch dead ends, loops, or missing questions that could impact data quality. 
• Be mindful of analysis complexity: The more complex the structure, the more effort required to interpret results. Ensure your reporting approach accounts for different respondent journeys and datasets.
• Use clear labels and internal naming: When working with repeated sections or similar questions, consistent naming conventions will make it much easier to manage responses and export data later - this is most important for your reporting field headings.

Key takeaways:

• Plan structure and reporting before building
• Keep activities clear, concise, and well-organised
• Test thoroughly to avoid issues later
• You can use google analytics and other analytics tools you have set up to monitor your activity’s performance and engagement throughout

If you need support, it’s always worth reaching out to Delib (support@delib.net) for guidance.