Overview — Responses & Statistics

Overview — Responses & Statistics

Once your survey is activated and participants start answering, LimeSurvey collects every submission for you. This overview shows where to find your collected responses, what the statistics view offers, and how to export your data for deeper analysis.

Two places show activity at a glance:

  • The admin top bar includes a response counter, tracking collected responses against your plan's allowance.
  • The survey list has a Responses column with per-survey counts, and each survey card in the workspace shows a statistics icon (active surveys only) that jumps straight to that survey's statistics.

Viewing responses

In the new editor, open the Results tab at the top of the editor — the tab is greyed out until the survey is active. The Results overview shows four cards:

  • Total responses — everything collected so far.
  • Full responses — surveys submitted with the Submit button on the last page.
  • Response rate — the share of full responses, as a percentage.
  • Incomplete responses — started but never submitted (see Good to know).

Below the cards are a "Responses (last 30 days)" chart and a "Completed / Incomplete" chart.

If you invite participants from a closed participant list, the survey participants page has its own Summary block showing Total, Having an invitation sent, Missing an access code, Opted out, Screened out, and Completed.

The Responses list (in the Results sidebar) shows each response with the columns ID, Completed, Date of last action, Seed, and Language. Use the Filter responses / Clear filters controls to narrow the list, each row's "..." menu to view, edit, or delete a single response, and the row checkboxes for batch actions (Download files, Delete attachments, Delete).

Statistics

Statistics come in two forms, in two different places:

  • Quick charts (new editor) — in the Results tab, open the Responses list and use the view toggle at its top right to switch from the table to the chart view. Choose a chart type at the bottom: Bar, Pie, Radar, Line, or Doughnut. This is a fast visual summary and is still being built out — it does not yet do everything the full statistics screen does.
  • Full statistics (classic) — open Survey menu → Statistics (also reached by the green Export statistics button on the chart view). This opens the classic statistics screen with two modes. Simple mode gives ready-made per-question graphs. Expert mode lets you pick which questions to include and filter by completion state, response ID, or specific answers. It shows frequency tables with percentages. For numerical questions, it also reports count, sum, average, standard deviation, minimum, median, and maximum. Output as HTML (shown on screen, the default), PDF, or Excel. Being a classic screen, it opens outside the autosaving editor — run it with its own buttons (View statistics, Clear, Close); nothing is saved automatically.

Tip: each question has a Show in statistics setting in the question settings panel — it controls whether the question appears in these results.

Limitations to know about: the statistics screens summarize your data, but they are not an analysis tool. More advanced data manipulation — cross-tabulations, custom calculated variables, weighting, significance testing — is not available inside LimeSurvey. For that kind of work, export your responses (see below) and analyse them in Excel, SPSS, or R.

File upload questions: uploaded files are not part of the statistics; you collect them from the Responses list. Download them in bulk by ticking the rows you want and choosing Download files in the bar that appears, or per response via the row's "..." menu → Download all response files.

Exporting

You can export both raw responses and finished statistics, but both currently open classic screens:

  • Responses — while the Results area is open, a green Export results button in the top bar opens the classic export screen, with formats for analysis tools (SPSS, R, STATA) plus Excel, CSV, and more. This export flow is being rebuilt, so treat the exact steps as subject to change.
  • Statistics — exported from the classic Statistics screen covered under Statistics above.

Good to know

  • Incomplete responses have no submission date. They occur when a participant uses "resume later", abandons the survey partway, or when a response is entered manually but never submitted. Statistics filters let you include or exclude them.
  • Response limit: free instances include a limited number of responses — watch the counter in the top bar. If your instance goes over the limit and is locked, you cannot access responses until it is unlocked (see What happens if I exceed my response volume?).
  • Responses are only available once a survey is active or has expired.

Using the classic editor?

This article describes the new survey editor. If your screens show a Survey menu with a "Responses" entry and a "Responses & statistics" toolbar instead, you are using the classic editor — see the original article.

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