Read responses and export

By the end of this page you have looked at the first responses on a map and have a file open in QGIS with one row per pin and the sub-question answers as attributes.

Open the Responses page

Click the Responses tab in the editor’s top navigation. It has five views:

• Overview — counts for the survey: responses, responses today, completion rate, median time, map features and flagged responses, plus a small Response Map and Latest responses. Until the first respondent finishes, it tells you to share the link.
• Map — every pin, line and polygon from every respondent on one map. Click a feature to see the answers attached to it.
• Responses — one row per respondent. Clicking a row opens the response drawer with everything that person answered, where you can add tags and notes or exclude a response you think is spam.
• Charts — one chart per choice, rating and number question. Clicking a bar filters the map and the table to those respondents.
• Performance — how many started each section and where people dropped out.

Responses collected through the test link before you published are not here if you ticked Delete all test responses when publishing.

Export the data

1. On any Responses view, click Export data.

2. Choose a Format:

   Format	Contents	Use it for
   GeoJSON + CSV	A ZIP with one GeoJSON per map question and a CSV of the other answers, one row per respondent	Any GIS; web maps; scripts
   Excel	One workbook: observations (one row per placed feature, with latitude and longitude), responses (one row per respondent), sessions	Reading in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice
   GeoPackage	One .gpkg file, one layer per map question, every attribute kept	QGIS and ArcGIS (recommended)
   CSV	The same tables as Excel, as UTF-8 CSV files in a ZIP	R, Python, pandas
   Shapefile	One shapefile per map question in a ZIP; field names are cut to 10 characters	Older GIS tools
   KML	One file, one folder per map question	Google Earth

3. Leave Include excluded responses off unless you want responses you trashed or marked as not approved.

4. Switch on Completed responses only to export only respondents who reached the last section; the count matches completed on the Overview.

5. Click Export. The browser downloads the file.

The dialog remembers your last format. Respondents who opened the survey but answered nothing are never exported. Every detail of each format, including column names, is in Exports.

Open the result in QGIS

For “Safe crossings” the GeoPackage is the straightforward choice:

1. In QGIS, choose Layer › Add Layer › Add Vector Layer…, pick the .gpkg file and add the layer named after your point question. Dragging the file from the file manager onto the map canvas does the same.

2. Open the attribute table. Each row is one pin. Four columns identify the response (session, session_id, language, validation_status); the remaining columns carry the sub-question answers under the names you gave them, so What makes this crossing unsafe? is the reason column.

3. Style the layer by that reason column (Categorized in the layer’s symbology) and you have a map of unsafe crossings coloured by cause.

Coordinates are WGS 84 (EPSG:4326). If your project uses a projected system, QGIS reprojects on the fly.

If you chose GeoJSON + CSV instead, unzip the archive and add the .geojson file the same way; the .csv holds the non-map answers with the same session_id, so you can join the two tables on it.

Where to go from here

• Give respondents and stakeholders a live view with a public results page: Share results publicly.
• Add boundaries, a plan or existing sites beneath the respondent map: Add a reference layer.
• Change the survey while it is live: Edit a published survey.
• Think about what makes a map question work before the next survey: Designing a map survey.