If you need to enter survey responses manually, learn how to do it here.
Periodically a client may need to enter multiple survey responses into Polco, either using a kiosk in a public place or from paper surveys. The Polco platform employs safeguards to prevent multiple responses to surveys, so it requires an extra step to work around. While generally it is better to use the online capabilities of the platform than paper surveys (even for hard-to-reach populations) here are some best practices if you need to enter multiple surveys online.
1. Set up an incognito window
An incognito window prevents your session from being stored in your browsing history, and any cookies that have been created that log your actions while online are immediately deleted. Because we prevent multiple submissions to surveys, this is the only way to enter more than one response from the same computer.
The easiest way to open an Incognito window is to open your browser and then use the keyboard shortcut combination Ctrl-Shift-N (Windows) or Command-Shift-N (macOS). If you are using Chrome, you can also click the three dots at the upper right corner of your browser and select “New incognito window”.
With Chrome, you will see the following message, on other browsers you can expect to see something similar indicating that you are using incognito mode:
Each time you enter a survey, you will need to open a new incognito window. Enter the data, then close the window and open a new incognito window until all surveys are recorded.
3. Note the date and time you are entering the surveys, along with the location.
If you ever suspect that someone is trying to enter multiple responses which could skew the data, the date, time, and location information will help us know that this was a legitimate reason for multiple surveys to have been entered from the same IP address.