When a quotas are defined for multiple response categorical questions, the quotas for all responses chosen by the respondent are pended. If the interview is completed, then the corresponding complete counts are incremented. When a respondent chooses more than one response, this results in more than one quota cell being incremented.

Quota prioritization lets you decide how many cells to pend, and allows you to choose the method by which those cells are chosen. There are four possibilities.

Pend the cell with the highest priority, if this response is chosen. If this response is not chosen, try the cell with the next highest priority, and so on. Cells with no priority defined have the lowest priority of all.

Pend a cell at random from the cells for the responses that have been chosen. If an interview times out and is restarted after a cell has been pended, the same cell will be pended if the interview is restarted. If the questionnaire contains routing or other logic based on the value of the pended cell, this ensures that the interview behavior will be the same whether or not it times out.

Pend the cell that is least full from the cells for the responses that have been chosen. If an interview is restarted after timing out, the LeastFull cell is recalculated using the latest quota information. This may mean that a different cell is pended in the restarted interview to the one that was pended when the interview was originally started. If the questionnaire has routing based on the pended cell, the path through the interview may change once the completed portion of the interview has been replayed.

Pend the cell that has the fewest completed interviews for the responses that have been chosen. If an interview is restarted after timing out, the LeastFull cell is recalculated using the latest quota information. This may mean that a different cell is pended in the restarted interview to the one that was pended when the interview was originally started. If the questionnaire has routing based on the pended cell, the path through the interview may change once the completed portion of the interview has been replayed.

There are two ways of specifying the method you want to use. The easiest is to use the Quotas activity in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin as described in “Prioritizing Quotas” in the Quotas section of the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server User's Guide. Alternatively, you can edit the QUOTA_Matrix table in the project's quota database. For information about this table and how prioritization works, see QUOTA_Matrix table.