Supercharging surveys for deeper understanding
The inca SmartProbe API is a service that can be integrated with any online research platform to intelligently generate a follow-up (‘probing’) question based on the original open-ended question that a respondent was asked and on the respondent’s answer. Its Demerit Classification scores open-ended responses and can be used towards quality checks.
The Benefits
Deeper insight
Probes generated by inca SmartProbe encourage elaboration and more specific feedback and yield richer insights. inca SmartProbe builds rapport by showing the research participant that someone on the other side is listening and curious to know more.
Researchers can play a significant role in steering the conversation, briefing the AI to focus or avoid certain topics, steering the conversation in specific directions, interjecting with additional info as needed, or adopting different personalities to fully engage participants.
Quality check
inca SmartProbe Demerit Classification helps detect low-quality responses by returning a score ranging from 0 to 1. The higher the score, the greater likelihood of "low quality”. Answers to the original OE and to the probing question are both scored. The information can be used for live quality checks.
Three main factors influence the demerit score:
Completeness of the Response: If the response is incomplete or consists of gibberish strings (e.g., “xwoiqiojiocjvi”), it is highly likely to result in a high score.
Consistency and Appropriateness of Language: If the response is not written in the specified language (lang_id) or differs from the question's language, it is very likely to result in a higher demerit confidence score. Additionally, inappropriate words will also generate a high score.
Pertinence/Contextual Consistency: If the response is pertinent to the question, it will be treated as high quality, resulting in a low demerit confidence score
Watch this short explainer video below to see how inca SmartProbe API works!
Easy to integrate, inexpensive to run
We make it easy for you to super-power your surveys conducted through any platform with inca conversational AI purpose-built for market research, so you don’t need to invest in dedicated R&G and additional infrastructure!
Deliverables: The inca SmartProbe API records 4 things:
The response to the initial open-ended question
The AI-generated probing question
The response to the probing question
Demerit scores
The data is stored along with the rest of your survey data as additional columns in the data file.
Why is inca SmartProbe API better than other AI Probing
inca SmartProbe Uses Neuro-symbolic AI which combines the intuitive questioning of System 1 with the reasoning of System 2. inca SmartProbe is the result of a partnership between leading AI specialists and experienced market researchers. It is technology that has been created by market researchers for market researchers.
Profound implications versus less sophisticated approaches: inca SmartProbe will ask good probing questions for the market research context. Probes that:
Follow best practice market research principles (are not leading, do not ask more than one question, do not ask closed questions).
Follow a high standard of ethics (are not inappropriate, do not probe further to profanities or toxic content, do not ask for PII information).
Can be easily steered based on the researcher's examples and objectives.
Enable open-ended analysis at-scale.
How it works
What’s the experience like for research participants?
They do not leave the survey platform. They see inca’s probing question after answering the initial open-ended question. The probe appears in the same format as the other open-ended questions.
The inca
Where’s my data stored? Is my data shared with other API users?
inca stores your data on secure servers in the United States, for a period of at least 30 days or more depending on the data retention policy agreed to in the MSA. Data will also be stored on the survey/research platform you are integrating with, as with any other data collected via that platform. Data is not shared with other API users.
inca SmartProbe API Data Governance is available here.
Is my data used for any training purposes by inca | Nexxt Intelligence, and the Large Language Models (LLMs) behind inca?
inca | Nexxt Intelligence: It’s a discussion as part of the MSA - we encourage clients to allow us to use their data for training purposes to further enhance the general capabilities of inca’s. Clients may choose to opt-out.
LLMs: No, your data will not be used by any of the LLMs behind inca for training purposes.
What do I/the researcher get from the inca SmartProbe API, and where do I see the outputs?
The data will be stored along with the rest of your survey data from your survey/research platform. How the data will show and be visualized depends entirely on your survey/research platform.
What do I need to do to get started?
It’s very easy! Please contact us and will provide you with
A simple guide to get you started
An API key and Integration Documentation for your programming team
SmartProbe Demo
Test inca’s probing capabilities live!
To start, provide an open-ended question & a participant response.
Integration FAQ
Where does the integration happen?
On the survey platform you choose to add SmartProbe to your OEs. If you use multiple platforms for your surveys, each platform needs an integration.
How does the integration work?
What integration means is for the survey programmer to add a few lines of codes to your survey programming.
Your programmer/scripter will need to add the code to each OE you want to use inca SmartProbe API with. However, once they have added the code for one OE, they can use the code as a template for other OEs.
Code templates are available for Qualtrics, ConfirmIt, and Decipher.
Tips:
The key to successful integration is following the correct data structure
Save your code template
Who performs the integration?
Integration of the API with your survey platform requires a survey programmer whether it’s your internal scripting team or a 3rd party.
We don’t have a scripter/programmer on the team. Can we still complete the integration?
No, you need a programmer from your team or a scripting partner to add your/the researcher’s instructions to the code of your survey. Please contact us for a template to help you formulate your instructions for your scripter.
Is my data used for any training purposes by inca | Nexxt Intelligence, and the Large Language Models (LLMs) behind inca?
inca | Nexxt Intelligence: It’s a discussion as part of the MSA - we encourage clients to allow us to use their data for training purposes to further enhance the general capabilities of inca’s. Clients may choose to opt-out.
LLMs: No, your data will not be used by any of the LLMs behind inca for training purposes.
FAQ
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1. The inca SmartProbe is proven to encourage survey participants to provide more thoughtful and elaborated answers. The richer OE results lead to more differentiates findings, which ultimately lead to more actionable insights. Contact us for a case study for more details. The API is a powerful add-on to any survey platform in order to enrich the quality of the conversations and maximize the value of OE questions in surveys.
2. The API provides a field, which indicates whether, for any respondent, the response given to an open ended question is considered of low quality, i.e. specifically, ‘non responsive’ or ‘uninformative’. For clients, this means that they can choose to use that information, for example to close surveys from respondents who give poor quality answers to the open ended questions.
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The inca SmartProbe API is a standalone service that allows inca’s conversational probing capabilities to be leveraged natively on other platforms: through a one-time technical integration, end-users can experience inca’s probe questions without ever leaving your platform. Platforms have full control over when the SmartProbe API is used, and what the UI looks like: for example, it could dynamically appear within a survey form, or it could even be used in a virtual reality environment by a virtual interviewer!
The inca conversational AI platform, on the other hand, is an end-to-end solution for conducting market research surveys and analysing the data using rich conversational AI capabilities. It is available as a DIY survey solution without any technical setup required. The inca conversational AI platform incorporates inca SmartProbing in addition to highly visual survey questions and projective techniques. The platform also allows the user to buy fieldwork sample, monitor fieldwork progress and analyse data live on the inca dashboard.
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Survey software providers and automated research platform providers can purchase an inca SmartProbe API licence from Nexxt Intelligence. Please contact us for more details.
If end users of research, either on the agency or client side, want to be able to use the inca SmartProbe API they will need to work with their programmer / scripter, whether internal or 3rd-party.
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inca SmartProbe API is currently available in 90 languages and variants. See more details here: https://www.nexxt.in/languages
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For each respondent, the inca SmartProbe API records 4 things:
- the response to the initial open ended question asked by the user
- the smart probe returned by inca’s AI in response to the respondents answer
- the response to the smart probe
- (in relevant cases) a ‘demerit’ flag which indicates if the respondent’s open ended answer was uninformative or nonresponsive to the question that was posed
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Clients have the choice of whatever analytical tools they wish to use for the open-ended data collected using the inca SmartProbe API.
Options include:
- manual coding of the open ended data
- using a text analytics tool they are already using to code the open ended data
- using Nexxt Intelligence’s inca AI coding tool. It automatically codes the open-ended data but also puts the user in the loop so they can optimize the code frame and coded results. To use inca AI coding the user just needs to export the data from the survey platform and then upload as a CSV file into inca AI coding. See inca AI coding for more information. inca AI Coding was developed specifically to accurately code the longer verbatims that result from using inca SmartProbe.
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ChatGPT is an extremely powerful technology, but out of the box it won’t reliably ask the kinds of probing questions that a market researcher would want to ask. A user could tell ChatGPT to “act like a market researcher” and give it a few examples of good probing questions, but as with any professional market researcher, it needs more context, edge case handling, and expert guidance in order to reliably generate good questions. That’s why we’ve built the inca SmartProbe API on top of GPT technology, to give you confidence in high quality probing capability, and a robust API that’s easy to integrate.
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inca SmartProbe has been tested on the following platforms: Decipher (Forsta Surveys), ConfirmIt (Forsta Plus), Qualtrics, Askia, Alchemer, IntelliSurvey.
inca SmartProbe is supported on any other platform which allows for API integrations within the survey (and which support JSON parsing).
SurveyMonkey does NOT support such API integrations.
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