Google Forms – Check for Duplicate Answers

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I want to make a new form where I ask people about their "top 15" within a list of elements. I have searched a lot, but I couldn't find anything. I decided to just make 15 questions, "what's your 1st?", "what's your 2nd?", etc.

Is there a way to check if the person didn't have duplicate answers?

Or is there a better way to do what I'm trying to accomplish?

Best Answer

You can design a Google form with this functionality directly in the form. Use a multiple choice grid with options "require 1 response per row" and "limit to one response per column". Example.

This would work better for a poll with fewer options; the fixed width of Google Forms is an issue here. Unfortunately, this issue will only get worse with new Google forms: example.

Otherwise, there is no way to enforce distinct answers to separate questions within a form. You can use a script to detect duplicates in your data (if it goes to a spreadsheet), but this would happen after the form is already submitted, i.e., too late.

Two suggestions:

  1. For this type of survey you'd be better off on another platform. E.g., SurveyMonkey offers ranking questions where users reorder the given options (possibly with drag-and-drop). This is a more natural thing to do than being asked about 1st, 2nd, 3rd... and realizing by the end of selection that you overlooked an option you actually like a lot and now you have to redo all the previous selections. With SurveyMonkey you'd simply take that option and drag it to the top.
  2. Choosing and ranking 15 items is a lot of work, and you're going to get a lot of noise in your data from people who will be too tired to think much about their replies.
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