Panterra Survey 10: Quota-Managed Survey Administration for Research Programs

Panterra Survey 10 is a Vue 3 single-file application that occupies the middle tier of the Panterra research lifecycle. It takes as input a respondent pool JSON produced by the Pool Designer, applies quota constraints defined in that file, administers survey questions one at a time to each respondent in the pool, and exports completed response data via SheetJS as CSV or XLSX. D3.js renders a quota fulfillment chart that updates in real time as responses accumulate, so the researcher can see cell progress without leaving the application.

The application is a single .vue file that any Vue 3 environment can serve statically. There is no backend requirement. Quota state, response records, and session metadata all live in browser memory during a session and flush to file on export.

Why is it useful?

Quota management is where survey research fails operationally before it fails analytically. The structural problem is simple: without hard cell limits, the respondents who complete the survey earliest dominate the dataset. Convenience bias accumulates quietly. By the time a researcher notices the age 18-34 cell is at 60% of responses while the 55+ cell is at 12%, the fieldwork budget is spent.

Survey 10 enforces the quota contract defined upstream. Each respondent in the pool carries demographic attributes. Before a respondent is administered the survey, Survey 10 checks whether the demographic cells they belong to are open or full. If a cell is full, the respondent is routed out cleanly with a termination record. If the cell is open, the survey proceeds and the cell counter increments on completion.

The D3.js fulfillment chart makes the quota state visible continuously. A researcher watching the chart can see which cells are filling fast and which are lagging, and adjust field strategy accordingly — for instance, by activating a supplementary sample for an underperforming cell.

The result is a structurally representative sample that matches the demographic contract set at study design, without manual monitoring and without post-hoc weighting to compensate for imbalance.

How and where does it apply?

Survey 10 is the second step in a three-step Panterra lifecycle.

Pool Designer produces the input. Survey 10 administers and enforces. The Panterra Analyzer consumes the output. The file handoff at each boundary is explicit JSON in and structured spreadsheet out, which means any step can be replaced or bypassed without breaking the others.

The quota configuration block lives in the pool JSON. Each demographic cell carries a target count and a completed counter that Survey 10 increments during the session.

{
  "quotas": {
    "age_18_34": { "target": 40, "completed": 0 },
    "age_35_54": { "target": 35, "completed": 0 },
    "age_55_plus": { "target": 25, "completed": 0 }
  },
  "totalTarget": 100
}

Beyond the Panterra toolchain, Survey 10 is usable as a standalone quota-managed field tool for any study that can express its respondent pool as a JSON array and its quotas in the above schema. Research teams running hybrid studies — some synthetic respondents from Agentic Survey, some real respondents recruited externally — can merge pool files and administer them through Survey 10 using the same quota enforcement logic.