Qualtrics: Frequently Asked Questions

All active members of the NC State community (e.g., administrators, faculty, staff, students) who have a valid ncsu.edu email address can sign up for an account.

Visit the Create an Account webpage for step-by-step registration instructions.

If you do not receive your confirmation email after using your access code, you will need to contact Qualtrics Support (not the NC State brand administrators).

Your username is the email you used to sign up for an account on the NC State Qualtrics license.

If you forgot your password, reach out to the brand administrators and request a password reset email.

You can determine whether you have a free account or an NC State account by logging in and clicking on your initial in the top-right corner of the page. If you do not see “North Carolina State University” under your name, then your account is not registered under the NC State license.

If you previously signed up for a free account using your ncsu.edu email address, you have two options for moving your account under our license. First, you can contact Qualtrics Support (not the NC State brand administrators) and request they delete your account. You may want to download any survey projects and data prior to contacting support. Once the deletion process is complete, follow the instructions to Create an Account at NC State.

Your second option is to submit a request to Qualtrics Support to move your account over to the NC State license. Account transfers may take several weeks. Once your account has been transferred, you will need to reach out to the NC State brand administrators to upgrade your account.

You have two options for moving your content to an account under the NC State license. First, you can Create an Account, download all your materials from your previous account (survey projects, data, contact lists, resources, etc.), and upload them to your new account. Your second option is to contact Qualtrics Support (not your brand administrators) with your current account credentials and request an account transfer to NC State. The transfer process may take several weeks.

You can reach out to the brand administrators and request a change to the first or last name associated with your account.

Your email address is tied to your login credentials and cannot be changed.

NO. When you try to sign up using an emailed collaboration link, you are creating a “shared survey user” account with extremely limited access to the platform. Your account is not on the university license, and the NC State brand administrators cannot see or troubleshoot your account.

If you have previously created an account with your ncsu.edu address through a collaboration sign-up link, your only option is to contact Qualtrics Support (not the brand administrators) and request they delete your account. You may want to download any survey projects or data prior to contacting support. Once the deletion process is complete, follow the instructions to Create an Account at NC State.

Your Qualtrics account will remain active with NC State as long as you are eligible (e.g., enrolled, employed). If you are leaving the university, we encourage you to think ahead and make a plan to download or dispose of the content in your account.

Beginning in July 2025, individuals who leave the university will have a one-year “grace period” during which they can continue to access their account normally. After that grace period, accounts will be disabled and, after one more year, deleted. If you have content you want to save and you find that your account has been disabled, contact the brand administrators, who will work with you to either download your content or grant you temporary access to your account.

Please refer to the Data Management Framework for more information on NC State’s regulation for the collection, storage, and destruction of data.

It is your responsibility to have a continuity plan in place for when colleagues transition away from your unit to avoid the loss of important projects and data. We recommend transferring ownership of survey projects, contact lists, and library resources to the account of a current employee or to a generic account that can be accessed by several team members. As with other online platforms, once content has been deleted, it cannot be recovered.

Only brand administrators can transfer survey ownership between accounts at NC State. To request a transfer, contact your brand administrators with the names and email addresses associated with both accounts and the survey project names. We will also need permission from both parties to complete the transfer. If contact with the former employee/student is no longer possible, please provide details about the situation in your request.

Contact lists, library resources, and workflows do not transfer with survey projects, and the brand administrators cannot transfer the ownership of these materials between accounts. The best practice is to store a copy of these items in a secure location outside the Qualtrics platform.

User permissions are determined according to primary status at NC State.

Table 1: User permissions by account type

Table 2: Available question types

*not WCAG 2.1 compliant

In support of the requirement that all NC State-related web pages and applications meet ADA compliance criteria, Qualtrics question types that do not meet WCAG 2.1 compliance have been disabled on all user accounts.

For the most part, there are accessible question types (such as multiple choice and text entry) that can gather the same information as inaccessible question types. If an inaccessible question type is essential to survey design, the brand administrators handle requests on a case-by-case basis and can enable question types for individual accounts.

If you would like to use a non-accessible question type, submit a request to the brand administrators with the following information:

• A brief summary of your project (1-2 sentences)
• Whether the questionnaire and question type have been approved by the IRB, if applicable
• To whom you are administering the survey
• If there is a possibility that someone with a disability or other accessibility requirements will be in your survey population and, if so, whether an alternative, accessible version of the survey will be provided

Please see NC State’s regulation on Information and Communication Technology Accessibility for more information about how the policy applies to web-based services at NC State.

In Qualtrics, the ability to grant other users viewing and editing permissions is called “collaborate.” Only survey owners can extend an invitation to collaborate. NC State Qualtrics users can collaborate with users outside the university license if that person’s account permissions also allow for collaboration.

If the person you want to collaborate with at NC State does not yet have a Qualtrics account, they must first Create an Account under the NC State license. Please check to ensure that they are signed up prior to sending a collaboration request. If the intended collaborator uses the link in the collaboration invitation email before creating an account, they will sign up for a “shared survey user” account with extremely limited access to the platform.

To share a survey project, go to the “Tools” menu of the Survey Editor tab or to the project options dropdown menu on the “Projects” page and click “Collaborate.” Search for your collaborator by their name or email address and then choose each permission you want to grant.

Only one person can own a survey in Qualtrics. Users may share viewing or editing access with others through the collaboration feature.

Only brand administrators may transfer survey ownership between user accounts at NC State. Please see the question below on survey ownership transfers for more details.

Between users at NC State: Only brand administrators can transfer survey ownership between accounts at NC State. To request a transfer, contact your brand administrators and provide the following information:

• The names and email addresses associated with both accounts
• The survey project name(s)
• Written permission from both parties (current owner, new owner) to complete the transfer

With a user outside the NC State license: Contact Qualtrics Support (not the brand administrators) to request transferring your content to a user outside the organization. This includes users who have free accounts, users at another university or institution, or an account that you have with a different institution.

Contact lists, library resources, and workflows associated with survey projects do not automatically transfer with the associated project. You will need to download and share them separately.

We strongly recommend closing all survey projects before transferring ownership, as the process may disrupt data collection.

All emails sent through the NC State Qualtrics platform must be sent from a valid ncsu.edu email address. Otherwise, your email distribution will fail.

The default “From Address” is no-reply_surveys@ncsu.edu, an unmonitored no-reply account. Automatic replies to survey invitations sent through the Qualtrics distribution platform—such as out-of-office messages or email address change notifications—will be sent to this address, which you cannot access. If these messages are important for your research or records, we strongly recommend updating the “From Address” to an email account you check regularly.

You can customize the “From Address,” “From Name,” and “Reply-To Email” fields in the “Compose Email” menu of the Distributions tab. Instructions on how to do so can be found in the Qualtrics Email Distributor How-To .

The weekly outgoing email limit on your account is determined by your primary status at NC State. If you attempt a distribution that exceeds this limit, all emails in that distribution will fail. The weekly limit includes all emails sent from the Qualtrics platform, including invitations, reminders, “thank-you” emails, and emails triggered from a workflow.

If you plan to use the Qualtrics email distributor and anticipate your distribution will exceed this limit, contact your brand administrators and provide the following information:

• Name and email address of the individual(s) requesting the increase on their account
• An estimate of how many emails per week you will need to send
• A brief description of how you obtained the contact list(s) and whether you have done any validity checks, including checking for duplicate, misspelled, or otherwise invalid email addresses

By default, the API and offline app are disabled on accounts under the NC State license. If you would like access to these features, contact the brand administrators with a brief description of your request. Please be mindful that the brand administrators cannot provide training or implementation assistance with these features.

SMS distributions are not supported on the NC State Qualtrics license. Users who wish to distribute survey invitations via SMS messages may want to consider anonymous links and/or QR codes instead.

Currently, neither third-party extensions like Salesforce and Tableau nor integrations with applications like Google Sheets are allowed. No exceptions.

This standard is in place to mitigate data security risks and to comply with NC State’s Data Management Framework . Allowing third-party extensions could expose sensitive data to unauthorized access, especially if the third-party service fails to meet university data security standards. These integrations may also bypass institutional safeguards, making it harder to monitor and control data sharing. By restricting extensions and integrations, we ensure greater security and compliance with both university policies and regulatory requirements such as FERPA, HIPPA, and GDPR.

There are several options for sharing survey projects and library resources with other Qualtrics users.

If you are working with just one or two other people on a specific survey project, your best option is to collaborate. See the “collaborate” question in this FAQ for more information. It is only possible to collaborate on survey projects; contact lists and library materials are not included.

If you are working with two or more people and would like to share not only survey projects but also contact lists and library resources, you can contact the brand administrators and request the creation of a “user group.” Only the brand administrators can add or delete users from the group.

Be prepared to share the following information when requesting a group:

• The group members’ names and email addresses associated with their NC State Qualtrics account
• A short, memorable name for the group (for example, your lab or unit name)

If you are working in an office or unit where several people need long-term access to all the same elements (e.g., survey projects, standalone workflows, contact lists, library materials), consider creating a generic account in the NC State Google Workspace. By creating a Qualtrics account using a generic account email address, anyone who shares the login credentials will have the same viewing and editing access on every part of the platform. More information about setting up a generic account can be found on the NC State Office of Information Technology website .

As long as you are an active member of the NC State community (e.g., employed, enrolled), you have unlimited storage on the Qualtrics platform for your projects, data, reports, lists, etc.

If you are leaving the university, we recommend downloading and saving all your materials in a separate location, as your account will be disabled and eventually deleted. Please refer to the question on “leaving the university” in this FAQ for more details.

If you receive a message indicating that you have reached your active survey or question limit, please refer to the user permissions table in this FAQ for information on your account limits. In most cases, you can resolve this by simply closing surveys that are no longer active and/or deleting unused questions from your trash or survey draft that will not be included in the final published survey.

If your research requires more active surveys or questions per survey than your default permissions allow, please contact the brand administrators with your request, specifying the number of active surveys or questions you will need.

Several factors can cause an email distribution sent from the Qualtrics platform to fail in delivery. To pinpoint which issue is occurring, you can view and manage your email distributions from the “Emails” section of the Distributions tab of your survey project.

Common error messages and issues include:

• Emails Failed. The email distribution never left the Qualtrics server (for example, because the email addresses are misspelled).
• Emails Bounced. The email was rejected by the recipient’s server (for example, because it can’t get through the organization’s firewall or the recipient’s domain is not real).
• Email successfully “sent” but never received. The recipient may have marked similar survey invitation or reminder emails from Qualtrics as “spam” in the past, leading to their email being placed on a “blocklist.” Alternatively, the recipient may have a firewall and/or anti-virus software blocking emails from Qualtrics.
• Email limit. NC State users have a weekly email limit, and any distributions that exceed that limit will fail.

Please note that the brand administrators cannot assist with failed, bounced, or otherwise undelivered email distributions. Contact the brand administrators if you have questions about weekly email limits.

There are several reasons why participants may encounter an error message when trying to access your survey:

• “Survey Availability” setting. In the “Survey Options” menu (accessible from the Survey Builder tab), you can either leave the survey availability “open” or specify a start and expiration date. If participants are receiving an error message, check here and extend the expiration date as needed.
• “Incomplete Survey Responses” setting. If participants start but do not complete the survey, their attempt may automatically be recorded after a set period. Adjust the incomplete survey responses setting, available in the “Survey Options” menu, to allow respondents more time to complete the survey. You may need to re-share the survey link and/or delete their (recorded, incomplete) responses.
• Email link expiration. When sending survey invitations, the “Advanced Options” section of the email composition window allows you to set an expiration date for individual survey links. By default, this is set to 60 days. Even if the survey itself is open with no closing date, the email links will expire unless you adjust this field. If they do expire, you will need to send a new communication with updated links.

When looking at certain metadata fields in the “Data and Analysis” tab, such as First Name, Last Name, Email, External Data Reference, Location Latitude, Location Longitude, and IP Address, you will see several asterisks (*******) instead of data. These fields contain personally identifiable information (PII). At NC State, the ability to “view restricted data” is disabled by default to comply with the Data Management Framework .

Requests to enable the “view restricted data” permission are handled on a case-by-case basis. If you would like to access this feature on your account, contact the brand administrators and provide the following information:

1. What is the topic of your survey/project? (1-2 sentences)
2. Who is your population?
3. If your project is under IRB review, do you have IRB approval to collect non-anonymous data? If so, attach a PDF of your approved IRB form that shows permission to collect non-anonymous data (this is a yes/no question under the “data security” section) and a copy of the email indicating protocol approval from the IRB.
4. Why do you need to use identifiable data in the project? (1-2 sentences)

This permission applies to all surveys in your account. Therefore, you should turn “anonymize responses” on whenever PII is not necessary for a project.

If you are collaborating, your collaborators will not be able to see and download restricted data on your project unless they also have the “view restricted data” permission enabled on their account.

There are two possible reasons why the “collaborate” option is greyed out.

First, if you signed up for an account outside the NC State Qualtrics registration process using your ncsu.edu email address, your account has very limited permissions and you do not have the ability to collaborate. Please see the FAQ on “free accounts” for instructions on how to check your account registration status.

Second, check to see if you are the owner of the survey. Only survey owners can share projects with others.

Information in your contact list does not automatically attach to your survey records. This feature of the Qualtrics platform provides an extra level of security for keeping survey responses anonymous whenever possible.

To attach contact list information to survey responses, you can use embedded data in the survey flow and/or request that permission to “view restricted data” be enabled on your account.

Be mindful when designing your survey in Qualtrics and have a plan for capturing all necessary data before launching your survey. It may not be possible to retroactively attach contact list information to survey records.

Qualtrics hosts a free online training course on its XM Bandcamp website. There are also hundreds of support articles covering all aspects of the platform. Visit the Support & Contact Info webpage for more information and resources.

Please see the Support & Contact Info webpage for information on how to contact Qualtrics Support or the NC State brand administrators.