Calculating Survey Length

Date variables from Survey Monkey are initially stored as text in Q.

The date variables are stored as text, and so subtracting one from the other will not work: mathematical formulas do not work on text strings. To change these variables to dates, and to calculate the difference between them, follow these steps:

1. On the Variables and Questions tab, select your StartDate question.

2. In the Variable Type column, change the drop-down to Date.

Repeat the above steps for the EndDate question. The process will create two new variables, with the dates in date format. You can then go ahead and subtract the start from the end date to get the duration of the survey. This value will be in milliseconds, so to get the survey length in minutes, use =((EndDate_date - StartDate_date) / 1000) / 60 as your Excel-style formula (or =(EndDate_date - StartDate_date) / 1000 if you just want seconds).