Passing respondents back to Qualtrics after a SurveyEngine DCE

Many researchers use Qualtrics for their wider survey but need SurveyEngine for the choice experiment component. The passback integration connects the two.

How to integrate SurveyEngine choice experiments into a Qualtrics survey using the passback mechanism.

Ben White, 08.07.2026

The problem

The SurveyEngine Qualtrics passback allows a Qualtrics survey to launch a SurveyEngine choice experiment, complete it, and return the respondent and their choice data to Qualtrics. The choice data is appended to the Qualtrics response record.

Without the passback, researchers face the choice between managing two separate data files and matching on respondent IDs, or abandoning Qualtrics for the full survey - both of which add operational complexity.

Why passback matters

Many health and academic research teams have institutional Qualtrics licences and existing survey infrastructure built in Qualtrics. Requiring them to rebuild their entire survey in SurveyEngine is not practical when only the choice experiment component requires SurveyEngine's capabilities.

The passback also allows SurveyEngine-collected choice data to be combined with Qualtrics-collected covariate data in a single export, simplifying the analysis data preparation.

TLDR Quick links

Forum: Qualtrics passback

Forum: complex passback

Open a free account

Setting up the Qualtrics passback

Step 1: Build the choice experiment in SurveyEngine and publish it.

Step 2: Configure the SurveyEngine survey to accept passback parameters - the Qualtrics respondent ID and any variables to be passed from Qualtrics.

Step 3: Add a Qualtrics question block that redirects respondents to the SurveyEngine survey URL with the respondent ID as a URL parameter.

Step 4: Configure SurveyEngine to redirect back to Qualtrics on completion, passing the choice data as URL parameters.

Step 5: Test the full integration with 5-10 internal test completions. Verify that respondent IDs match, choice data appears in Qualtrics, and the redirect works correctly.

Worked example - intercity mode choice study

A health preference study uses Qualtrics for screening, demographics, and outcome measures, and SurveyEngine for the DCE component. The Qualtrics respondent ID is passed to SurveyEngine at the redirect point. SurveyEngine returns 12 choice responses plus consistency check results to Qualtrics at completion.

The final Qualtrics export contains all variables in a single file. No manual file matching is required. The integration is tested with 10 internal completions before pilot fieldwork.