How to Calculate RCV with SurveySparrow and RankedVote's CSV Import
What is Ranked Choice Voting?
Ranked choice voting is a voting system where voters can select their most preferred choices on a ballot – first, second, third, and so on – instead of just voting for a single choice. If no candidate receives enough first ranked votes to win a majority, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. Anyone who voted for the eliminated candidate has their vote redistributed to their next ranked choice.
This elimination and redistribution process repeats until a choice receives enough votes to win.
Why use Ranked Choice Voting?
Any time you're making a decision with more than two choices and where voters have equal say, ranked choice voting is the right tool for the job. It uncovers preferences with greater accuracy and fidelity than traditional voting methods.
What is SurveySparrow?
SurveySparrow a top customer engagement and employee survey platform used by thousands of global companies.
But, like so many online survey platforms, it does not directly support ranked choice voting. You'll need to use the RankedVote CSV Import Add-On to bridge that gap.
Read on to understand how to set up SurveySparrow to approximate a ranked choice ballot, export your data to CSV, and calculate the results using RankedVote's CSV Import.
Steps to Calculate RCV using SurveySparrow
Determine the Decision That Needs to be Made
The first step is to get crisp on what decision needs to be made. Ranked choice voting works great in situations where you’re making a decision amongst a group of people with equal say. Groups like teams, organizations, and fan communities. This makes it differ from techniques like “weighted voting” or “100-point exercises.”
Fantastic uses for ranked choice voting include: selecting leadership, prioritizing work, running contests, and choosing award winners.
Once you know the decision that needs to be made, it’s time to start creating the survey.
Create the Ranked Choice Ballot Using "Matrix" Question Type
In SurveySparrow, you can create a new survey from scratch. Or, you can add a question to an existing survey with your decision that needs to be made. Here's how you set up the survey for ranked choice voting:
Once you are into your survey, click "Add question" and then select "Matrix" in the "Others" section (picture below). The "Matrix" type works best for a few reasons. First and foremost, it creates an experience for your voters that most resembles the ranked choice ballot they may encounter in the real world. Second, when you get to exporting the data, there's less cleanup that you need to do.
A matrix question will now be placed in your survey editor. SurveySparrow makes it really easy to edit. Just click into any of the areas you want to edit and adjust.
- Insert Columns and Rows (#1) — Use this to add rows ("Statements") and columns ("Scale Points") that fit your needs.
- Edit Columns (#2) — These are the "rankings" voters will provide and should start with numbers (e.g. "1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc."). Add columns for the number of rankings you want voters to provide. Starting with numbers allows for the data to be exported in a way that the RankedVote CSV Import expects.
- Edit Rows (#3) — These are the "choices" that your voters will rank. Add rows until you have all your choices listed. Click into these fields and type in whatever your choices are called (e.g. Banana, Strawberry, etc. in the image below).
Collect Responses
Now that you've created your ranked choice form, you need people to vote! Click "Share" and then copy the URL you're given. Email it, text it, put it on your website...whatever works best to get it in front of your voters.
Any votes that are submitted are referred to as "responses" in SurveySparrow.
Export Responses as CSV
Once all the votes are in, it’s time to go get that spreadsheet.
Go to "Results" (#1 in the screenshot below) and then click "Responses" (#2). This gives you a table view of all the responses that have come in so far. You'll need to do a little column wrangling to get just the rankings to appear in the data.
Click the "Columns" button (#3) to control which columns show up in the CSV export.
A little popup will display. The key thing is to isolate the data to the specific ranked choice question you're asking. Turn off any row that's not directly relevant (like "Response info" and "Tags" in the image below).
Next, click on the "Download" button just above the "Columns" button you clicked previously. This causes a sidebar to slide out. Within it, click "Responses" and then click "CSV File" to get the file downloaded to your computer.
Check CSV Formatting
Open the CSV file that downloaded to your computer in your favorite spreadsheet program. SurveySparrow includes quite a few additional fields by default. You'll need to do a little bit of column shuffling and deleting to get the data in the necessary format.
- INSERT: A new column at the very beginning of the spreadsheet.
- COPY: The column labeled "Submission ID" as it's the unique identifier for the voter and paste it into Column A that you just created. Don't be surprised if it's all the way out in Column U or higher.
- KEEP: The all columns labeled "[Question Title]-[Choice]" (e.g. "What is your favorite fruit?-Mango"). These are the rankings provided by each voter.
- REMOVE: Everything else! Browser, OS, Contact Name, and so on.
When you're done, it should look like this:
- The first column is the unique identifier for each voter ("Response" in SurveySparrow's terms)
- The first cell in all columns after the first are the names of the choices that your voters voted upon
- The rankings under each column start with a number (i.e. "1st" or "1")
What if I have more columns?
If you ask multiple ranked choice questions or if you added additional fields (like asking for "First Name" and "Last Name") in your form, you'll need to do some column editing. The RankedVote CSV Import assumes it's dealing with one question at a time. The additional columns will muddy your results.
For each ranked choice question, save separate CSV files that contain your identifier (likely "Submission ID") and just the columns representing the choices of that specific ranked choice question. Delete any excess columns.
Use the RankedVote CSV Import Add-On
The votes are in, the CSV is exported, the columns are formatted...now it’s RCV calculation time! 🎉
Go to the RankedVote CSV Import Add-On, choose the CSV you just created, and click "Calculate Results."
Woohoo! You've now added this powerful decision-making technique to SurveySparrow!
Don't forget to check out the in-depth guides for using the CSV Import Add-On and Understanding RCV Results to get the most out of all the features at your disposal.
