Track Mouse Movement for Decision-Dynamics Research

Mouse tracking captures the cursor's path — not just the final click — while a respondent answers a choice-based question. It's the standard technique behind decision-dynamics research: a cursor that curves toward an option before ultimately landing on a different one is evidence of competing pulls between choices, even when the final answer looks clean. Domandata records normalized x/y position samples over time and stores them separately from the answer itself, so enabling it never changes what the answer looks like to recodes, conditions, or exports.

Mouse tracking is a beta, survey-wide option. When enabled, it records mouse movement for every question rather than requiring separate question-level toggles.

Every question is tracked, including text, media, slider, drag, and display-only questions. This keeps the collection rule all-or-nothing, like survey-wide timing, and lets researchers decide during analysis which trajectories are substantively useful.

1. Step 1: Open Survey Options. In Block Builder, expand Survey Options above the blocks.

   Step 1: Open Block Builder

2. Step 2: Turn on Track Mouse Movement. The beta toggle sits in the Timing section and applies to all questions.

3. Step 3: Preview and move naturally. Confirm the survey still feels normal to answer — tracking is passive and adds no visible UI for respondents.

   Step 3: Preview the question

Domandata samples cursor position at roughly 25 times per second while the pointer is over a question, capped at 800 samples per question per response. Samples are normalized to the question's own bounding box, so trajectories are comparable regardless of screen size.

Each tracked question adds five summary columns to your export:

• Mouse Samples: how many positions were captured. It's blank when mouse tracking never ran for that response, and 0 when tracking ran but the cursor never moved over this question.
• Mouse Tracking Duration (ms): time from the first sample to the last.
• Mouse Path Length (normalized): total distance traveled, in fractions of the question's width/height — a longer path than a straight line to the answer suggests hesitation or redirection.
• Mouse Max Deviation (normalized): the largest distance the cursor strayed from a straight line between where it started and where it ended — the direct "curved toward the unchosen option" signal.
• Mouse Direction Reversals: how many times the cursor changed horizontal direction — a simple proxy for wavering between options.

These are summaries, not the raw path. When survey-wide mouse tracking is enabled, Export also shows Raw Mouse Trajectories (JSON), which downloads every response's complete sample-by-sample path keyed by question export name. It follows the same response filters as other downloads. The same data is available in raw response JSON metadata through API export.

• Reaction Time Survey Questions for another millisecond-precision research measure
• Author-Defined Response Quality Rules
• Export Research Survey Responses