Lucid Secure Sample Integration

This article discusses how to integrate Forsta Plus with Lucid as a sample provider to help eliminate link fraud and ghost completes.

As link fraud is getting more common in the research industry, so Forsta Plus aims to help tackle this. One of the ways we do this is by integrating with sample providers such as Cint and Lucid in a more secure fashion. This minimizes risk for link fraud and "ghost completes" and will give the most accurate quota reflection between Forsta Plus and Cint/Lucid. Ghost completes are survey responses that appear to be valid but are, in fact, from respondents who did not genuinely participate in the survey. This guide shows you how to integrate Forsta Plus and Lucid.

Lucid first passes a unique Respondent ID for the survey participant to Forsta Plus where the survey is carried out. Once the survey is complete, Forsta Plus securely transitions information back to Lucid with the unique Respondent ID, the survey status, and any additional (optional) parameters. Due to the encryption between Forsta Plus and Lucid, integrity of the survey is ensured, thus virtually eliminating ghost completes.

The value RID should be included in your link from CINT. You will need to capture this into a hidden variable in your survey using a script at the start of your survey. In the example below this variable is named “respondentID”

To enable Lucid integration, obtain a SHA1 hash key from Lucid. A Forsta Plus Company Administrator can paste this hash key into the Lucid hash encryption key field within the Professional Authoring > Company > Company Settings > Security tab configuration screen. See Company Settings in the Professional Authoring Knowledge base.

Once set, when redirecting at the end of a survey, use a Forsta Plus script node to pass the information back to the Lucid platform confirming the completion of a survey. Use the RedirectToLucid() function to pass the respondent ID, the survey completion status, and any optional additional parameters to Lucid.

Example script:

SetStatus('complete')
SetInterviewEnd()
RedirectToLucid(f("respondentID"), "complete", "myVal=1&name=9")

In the example script above, the function RedirectToLucid has three parameters:

1. respondentID: This is the Lucid unique respondent identifier for the survey participant.

2. status: A case-insensitive representation of the status of the survey (complete, terminate, security terminate or overquota). These correspond to the internal Lucid RIS values, 10, 20, 30 and 40, respectively.

3. additionalQueryStringParams: Any additional optional parameters to be included in the response sent to Lucid. The example shows two parameters (and their values), myVal and name being passed to Lucid. This parameter can be left out if not required.

Below shows a Survey Designer script node with the example script to pass information back to the Lucid platform. This node is typically placed at the end of the survey.