Critical rules and questions

Critical rules and questions designate conditions under which an interview may be completed. The questionnaire author declares such conditions in the Designer tool, and subsequently the headquarters user decides on what action Survey Solutions will undertake with these conditions before the interview can be completed (see types of actions below).

Most users will find the critical questions feature straightforward to use: if a question is declared critical in the Designer, then it must have an answer at the time of completion.

Mandatory (required) questions

A respondent may refuse to answer a particular question, may not know the answer, or, perhaps, a family member may be unavailable for answering - these are common situations during the interviewing process.

Every once in a while our support team is receiving questions on how to designate a question “required”, so that the interview may not proceed unless this particular question is answered. The justification could be that the answer is critically important to determine subsequent trajectory through the questionnaire: eligible/non-eligible for interview, treated/controls, etc.

Text substitution

In Survey Solutions it is possible to design questionnaires that use text substitution, denoted with an identifier enclosed in percentage signs, like so: %varname%.

In other software this may be known under the term “text piping”, “answer piping”, “text propagation”, etc.

The common situations when you may want to use this are:

• mention an answer collected earlier;
• display a calculated result;
• display reference values, etc.

For text substitution it is important what may be substituted in, and where a substitution may be used.

Randomizing order of questions

In this example we will consider similar questions (all of them categorical single-select) rating different aspects of the stay in a resort hotel. Our objective is to present the questions in different order for different respondents. Our other objective is to avoid pre-programming sequences of questions, as this is tedious and creates questionnaires with just a few sequences of questions.

We will rely on the following Survey Solutions elements:

• text substitution (text-piping) with the whole question text being substituted;
• random value to make the sequences of questions differ for different respondents;
• shuffling algorithm, we will use D. Knuth’s version of the Fisher-Yates algorithm, but many others will do just as well;
• and a few other tricks.  

In Survey Solutions Designer tool, we will compose a questionnaire like the following:

Alternatives to Date Type Question

A date type question requires three components of the date to be specified: year, month, day. If any of them is not known, the interviewers may not enter the other ones, even if they are known.

When this is not acceptable, date type question should not be used. Instead consider one of the following alternatives:

1. Three separate questions;
2. Patterned text question, with pattern specified as ####-##-##
3. Categorical question with year-month combinations, such as:

• 2016-September
• 2016-October
• 2016-November
• 2016-December
• 2017-January
• 2017-February
• 2017-March
• 2017-April

Replacement strategies

Every sample-based survey is subject to non-response either for the reason of refusal or problems of locating the household: household has moved, person died, address recorded incorrectly, etc. Whichever is the reason, it must be properly reflected in the interview result code - a categorical variable set by the interviewer to indicate the outcome of the visit to the household.

Survey Solutions doesn’t do sampling. A sampling specialist should perform sampling for your survey. The focus of the below discussion is not on how to properly select a replacement Y for a non-responding household X, but on:

Selecting a person

For random selection refer to this article. Here an example of determined selection is discussed.

Consider you wish to select a child attaining the lowest grade, with selecting younger children to break the ties. We define selname as a string variable:

selname=PERSONS.Where(
    p=>IsAnswered(p.name) 
    && IsAnswered(p.age)
    && IsAnswered(p.grade)
).Where(
    p=>p.age.InRange(5,15) 
    && p.grade.InRange(1,98)
).OrderBy(p=>p.grade).ThenBy(p=>p.age).First().name

Note that if there are two or more children of the same age and grade exist in the same household, then the one entered first will be selected.

Formatting Text

Question texts and static-texts can be formatted with a series of html tags. The html tags that can currently be used in Survey Solutions are described in this article.  

Line break
Use <br> to insert a line break. Use <br><br>…<br>  to insert multiple empty lines. 
 
Italic
Use  <i> to begin the use of italics. Then, use </i> when you want to discontinue the use of italics. 
 
Underline
Use <u> to begin the use of underline. Then, use </u> when you want to discontinue the use of underline. 
 
Teletype
Use<tt> to begin the use of Teletype. Then, use </tt> when you want to discontinue the use of Teletype.
 
Size

Testing Scenarios

Survey Solutions scenarios represent a storage of responses provided during a testing session. The objective is not to collect the data (use Interviewer App for that), but to simplify testing of complex questionnaires, which require a certain time-consuming input.

Two actions are available for a scenario in the Designer:

• view: review the answers entered in the scenario;
• run: start testing and apply the scenario to the questionnaire.

Here is what you need to know about scenarios:

Testing Your Questionnaire with the Online Tester

After creating your questionnaire you will need to test how the questionnaire operates (enabling and validation conditions). There are two ways to test your questionnaire, 1) the Tester app on an Android tablet or 2) the online Tester using a web browser on the computer.

This article will walk you through the process of accessing your questionnaire on the online Tester. If you would like to know how to use the tablet Tester application, please refer to this article. 

Testing Your Questionnaires Using the Tester Application

Although the web-based Questionnaire Designer application provides an easy way to create your questionnaire, sometimes you need to see what the questionnaire looks like on a device screen and how the questionnaire operates (conditions and variables). Depending on the mode of data collection, and the stage of testing you can choose to test the questionnaire with the Tester app on a tablet or the online tester.  
 
This article will walk you through the process of installing and testing your questionnaire using the Android Questionnaire Tester app on a tablet. 

Questionnaire variable

Questionnaire variable field is a new mandatory field for questionnaires in Designer.

Previously, the Questionnaire name field dictated the name of both the questionnaire and its main export file. Now, the questionnaires have two fields in Designer: the Questionnaire name field is a human-readable name that can contain any characters you wish, in any language, and can be rather large.
The Questionnaire variable field is an identifier that will be utilized by Survey Solutions during export of the data for naming the main data file and should follow the same rules as applied to variable names and roster names. This makes the naming of files more rigid and independent of the language in which the questionnaire was designed. For questionnaires to be valid, both identification fields must be populated. That means that this field must be filled for new old questionnaires as well as newly created ones.

Rosters

Roster concept

A roster is a group of questions and subsections that are repeated for a collection of similar items. The collection can be contained within that roster (Fixed roster) or it can be derived from a different question in the same questionnaire (numeric, list, or multi-select question), which is called a trigger-question. The type of the trigger question defines the type of the roster. When we say ’numeric roster’ we mean in fact ‘roster triggered by a numeric question’.

Static Text

Description

A stat ic-text is not a question but a text that can also be accompanied by a photo. A static-text cannot be modified by the enumerator, and is not intended to capture data but to communicate information to the enumerator or the interviewee. The text can be comprised of alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9), basic punctuation symbols and spaces. You may also use text substitution to reference questions and user-defined or system-defined variables in the text.  To do this, enclose the question or variable name with the percentage sign (%).>

Variables

Calculated variables are a powerful addition to the functionality of Survey Solutions: they are named computable expressions, which can be added to a questionnaire for convenience when operating with large and/or complex expressions. Variables can be used to simplify and improve the validation and enabling conditions. The values of variables can be substituted into the question text or into a static text to provide more informative, dynamic content.

Every variable has a name, a type and an expression.

Unsupported question type

Description

If a question is of a type that is not compatible with the current interviewing mode (CAPI or CAWI), then the user will see the message “Unsupported question type” and will not be able to interact with that question (enter, clear, or modify the answer). This may appear on the screen like the following:

Any value that has been entered earlier is retained (for example, if a geography question was answered during a CAPI session, and then interviewing was switched to CAWI mode) and the question is considered answered or not answered accordingly.

Overview: Categorical question types

Please note:

• All categories in categorical questions must have distinct numeric integer codes (may be negative or positive or include 0).

  September 13, 2021

Offline GIS Functionality Expansion

1. Question type earlier called area is now renamed to geography and supports capture of various geographic information:

• area (polygons),
• paths (polylines),
• single (point) and
• multiple (multipoint)

on offline maps. Each selection is exported as vectors of points. This question type is now accessible from the syntax to be used in conditional and validation expressions. The following properties can be used in the syntax:

• double geography.Area
• double geography.Length
• int geography.PointsCount

In addition, the IsAnswered() function also supports this question type now. For example, we can ask to show the secondary parcel if the primary parcel has been already indicated:

Validation warnings

Validation rules are an essential mechanism of improving the quality of data in CAPI surveys. However, not in all situations a check may point to a definitive problem with the data. In some cases the check may only request attention of the interviewer. In this case we are talking about warnings, rather than errors.

Consider, for example, the following validation rules:

In this case we are specifying that the wage must be positive, otherwise we should show an error to the interviewer. However, we are less sure about how high the possible wages are, so we will show a warning for the interviewer if it is above 100.0 USD per hour. To achieve this, we set the “is warning” flag in the Designer for this validation rule (first).

Special values for numeric questions

Numeric questions may be enhanced with special values. For example, a numeric wage question may contain in addition to a numeric input, a selection of “minimum wage” and “last month’s wage” categories. They can be set up in the Designer by entering integer numeric codes and corresponding value labels:

On a tablet, either a value should be entered, or one of the provided options may be selected (but not both):

Capturing signatures with a picture question

A picture type question can be used to capture signatures on a tablet. For this, the flag “use signature pad” should be set in the questionnaire Designer.

On the tablet, a person will be able to leave a signature by writing directly on the screen:

To store the signature, click the “Store signature” button.

In the web mode interviews an image of the signature (picture file) can be uploaded as a file. Signatures are exported as images. For more information about picture questions, see the Picture question article.

Audio Question

Description 

Audio question records sound using the tablet’s microphone. This can be used in surveys where the recording of the respondent’s voice may serve quality control purposes or be directly of interest to the researchers.

Creating a audio question 

In Questionnaire Designer,

1. Click on the Question Type text box.
2. Select Audio from the list displayed.

How an audio question works on a tablet 

To answer the question the enumerator has to:

Geography Question

Description 

A question of geography-type can capture various geographical information. For example, it can be used to define the exact location of the dwelling and the area of a land plot.

Geography-type questions are available only on mobile devices. In web interviews the question will appear as unsupported.

Geography-type questions are available only in the version of the Interviewer App with ESRI map support.

While it may be possible to answer the geography questions without using the base layer imagery, for example, with the automatic mode, the work is considerably more convenient for the interviewers when a base layer is provided. The map should be uploaded to the server first (see maps management), assigned to the interviewer, and the interviewer must synchronize the maps on the mobile device with the server.

Categorical: Multi-Select Question

Description

A categorical: multi-select **** question expects one or more answers to be selected from a list of possible answers (categories). The list of possible answers can either be defined before the interview or it can be created during the interview. If you are defining the categories prior to the interview you can add the categories in the design phase one at a time or by copying and pasting them from a document. On the other hand, if you want to create the categories during the interview you would need to link the question to a previous question or roster, so that the categories of the former are the answers given to the latter.

Categorical: Single-Select Question

Description

A categorical: single-select question expects one answer to be selected from a list of possible answers (categories). This list can either be defined before the interview or it can be created during the interview. To define the categories beforehand, you can add them one at a time, copy and paste them from a document, or upload them from a tab-delimited file in Questionnaire Designer.

To create the categories during the interview, the categorical: single-select question must belinked to a previous question (text, numeric, date) in a roster or to a roster. For example, some surveys ask about the respondent and expect the enumerator to type the respondent’s name. However, instead of typing the respondent’s name the enumerator can select it from a list containing the names of the household members. To do this, the question “Which of the household members is the respondent?” needs to be linked to a previous question, such as “Name each household member”.

Migrating questionnaires from ODK and compatible systems

To simplify migration from Open Data Kit (ODK) or compatible systems (Survey123, SurveyCTO, KoBoToolBox, etc) we present the possible/recommended alternatives in Survey Solutions for:

• question types,
• operators, and
• functions.

Individual system implementation of these features may vary. Online documentation for ODK was used as a reference when compiling the list of alternatives (accessed August 2021). For specifics of function implementation in different systems, refer to their respective documentation pages, e.g. for Survey123, for SurveyCTO, etc.

Survey Solutions Limits

The table below summarizes some of the Survey Solutions limits.
It is not advisable to design a questionnaire or rely on a work flow that is balancing on the margin of these limits.
 

*) in addition to the limit on number of questions a roster may not contain nested rosters to qualify as a simple roster, read more details here; as of v24.06 there is no longer a distinction between a roster and a simple roster.

Design limitations by question type

When laying out the questionnaire in the Survey Solutions Designer, mind the following design restrictions by question type:
 

Please note:

Roster limits

Survey Solutions provides capabilities for building complex multilevel data structures and at the same time prevents these data structures from exploding uncontrollably. Earlier this has been done at design-time - when the questionnaire was checked during compilation, error [WB0262]:Roster has reached size limit. Reduce roster size or decrease nesting. was sometimes issued, when the structure may have resulted in a large (multiple thousands of) number of items.

At design time the actual number of elements was not known, so the Survey Solutions applied the pessimistic strategy of taking maximum values for each trigger. This worked, but resulted in some seemingly valid designs to be banned, notably listing questionnaires where in an enumeration area there could be a large number of small dwellings or a small number of large houses, but never a large number of large houses. The pessimistic strategy deemed that possible.

Recognized Barcode Formats

The barcode question allows optical recognition of the following barcode types:
 

• Aztec Code
• Codabar
• Code 11
• Code 25, 
• Code 39
• Code 93
• Code 128
• Data Matrix
• GS1 DataBar 
• MSI Plessey
• PDF417
• QR Code
• EAN
• UPC

The exact type of the barcode is determined automatically during recognition and doesn’t have to be specified during questionnaire design.

Multimedia reference

Survey Solutions from version 5.7 allows the users embedding images into questionnaires. These images can be presented by configuring the static text elements. For details on the use of the images in the questionnaires, see the article on Questionnaire Attachments.

The following file types are supported:

We recommend combined size of attached files not to exceed 2MB to avoid slow synchronization. Suggested width for images contained in static texts is 720px, which may vary depending on tablet model, screen size and resolution.

Sharing a questionnaire

Survey Solutions Designer tool allows collaborative use of a questionnaire document by multiple users.

The modes of sharing:

• Edit means that the collaborator will be able to make changes to the questionnaire: add or remove questions, sections, options, revise logic and any other changes to the questionnaire. Any user that have edit mode access to a questionnaire may share a questionnaire further with another user.

• View means that the collaborator will be able to view the questionnaire contents, but not be able to modify it. They also don’t see and may not leave Designer comments.

  January 15, 2024

Anonymous questionnaire access

A Survey Solutions questionnaire is an electronic document that outlines the structure and the content of the survey and logical relationships between its elements, such as conditional question skips, validation rules, repetitions, etc. The work on development of a good quality questionnaire often spans several weeks if not months and involves multiple persons. Some of them will be working as objective setters, some will be implementers, some will do testing and quality control, and it can be taken as granted that there will be multiple revisions, improvements and changes over the course of its development.

Registration and Signing In

You do not need to install anything on your computer to start creating questionnaires in Survey Solutions. Questionnaire Designer is an online tool, which can be reached at https://designer.mysurvey.solutions/.

To log in for the first time, you need to create an account. 

To create an account:

1. Click on the Register link and complete the form displayed.
2. Check the email account that you used for registration. Open the confirmation email from admin@mysurvey.solutions, and click on the complete registration link.

After signing in with your Questionnaire Designer credentials, you will be directed to the My Questionnaires tab, which lists all the questionnaires created by you.

Recent Changes to the Questionnaire

To see the record of all recent changes made to the questionnaire, click on the History button located on the top right of the page. This page will list the question that was changed along with the username of the person who made the change, and the timestamp for when the change was done.

The Action button allows access to the menu with the following choices:

• View - open the questionnaire in the state corresponding to this revision. You can inspect the design of the questionnaire and even test it if necessary to verify what was the appearance and behavior at this specific revision. When you view an earlier revision, it shows you the questionnaire in the read-only mode. With that you can verify the structure and syntax used in an earlier version, but can’t do any changes. Yet, there is a ‘SAVE AS’ button in the view mode that allows creating a copy of the questionnare if you need it for edits (with the same result as ’extract at revision’ below).
• Revert to this version - revert all the changes (made by all the collaborators) after this questionnaire revision.
• Extract at revision - create a copy of the questionnaire corresponding to a specific revision (current questionnaire is not affected).
• Leave a comment - leave a descriptive comment to the specific revision indicating useful information either about a particular edit event, or cumulatively for multiple edits.

Some of the items may be missing in the menu, depending on your access level to the questionnaire and recency of the recorded change event.

Find and Replace

In this article you will lean how to use the search, and find and replace features in Designer. These features are particularly useful when making systematic changes to your questionnaire.
 

Search

 
To search within a section,

1. Click the search icon (or press Ctrl + F).

   

2. Enter a text in the search box that appears.

   

To search within the entire questionnaire (including conditions),

1. Click the search icon (or press Ctrl + F).

   November 4, 2016

PDF Export

The PDF file of the questionnaire provides a convenient overview of the whole questionnaire, detailed presentation of the options, conditions and instructions with a smart trimming of long texts and options’ sets.

The exported document includes the attachments (images) and a convenient legend page explaining various elements of the preview.

To export as a PDF, click on the Export as PDF button under the Action menu button.

If you have a multilingual questionnaire, it will ask you to choose a language.

Compile

To check the questionnaire for errors and system warnings, click on the Compile button located below the questionnaire name. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + B to compile the questionnaire. If no errors and warnings are found, a green text OK will display. 

If no errors are found, but system warnings are present click on the blue Warning link to see a list of system generated recommendations for your questionnaire. 

Questionnaire Settings

To update the settings of the questionnaire, click on the Settings button located at the top right of the page.

The settings of a questionnaire contain these parameters:

• Questionnaire name - a visible (human-readable) name of the questionnaire, and
• Questionnaire variable - a name that will be assigned to the main data file when this questionnaire is exported.
• Hide element when it is disabled - a flag that enforces all disabled elements in the questionnaire to be hidden when disabled regardless of their individual visibility settings (hide-if-disabled flag).

The questionnaire name may be in any language and contain multiple words, though it is still a good idea to keep it short.

Questionnaire Edit Screen

The main components of the Questionnaire Designer edit screen are: 

1. Settings. Enables you to add and edit collaborator privileges, alter the questionnaire name, and enable or disable the availability of the questionnaire in the public repository of questionnaires in Questionnaire Designer.  
2. History. Keeps the record of all recent changes made to the questionnaire, with the corresponding username and timestamp
3. Test, provides access to the online questionnaire Tester.
4. Compile. Checks the questionnaire for errors, and provides a list of errors with the corresponding links to their location in the questionnaire.
5. Advanced Instrument Panel.Provides access to the table of contents, questionnaire description, translations, macros, lookup tables, attachments, and comments within the questionnaire. 

Questionnaire Designer Homepage

The Questionnaire Designer home page will appear after you login. This page consists of:

1. ​My Questionnaires. Lists all of your questionnaires (both those that you have created and those that have been shared with you). Click on the name of the questionnaire to open and edit it.

2. Public Questionnaires. Provides access to a number of exemplary questionnaires and tutorials. 

3. Create New. Used to create new questionnaires. 

   June 14, 2016

Compile errors

Survey Solutions Designer conducts analysis of your questionnaire for many common problems and design errors. The following table summarizes the messages issued by the Designer when the questionnaire is compiled.

Some of these messages indicate a situation of an error, where the current questionnaire is invalid and may not be used for data collection until the indicated problem is fixed. For example, these are the syntax errors in expressions (see WB0002 or WB0003 below) or duplication of identifiers of variables (WB0026), and other similar problems.

Circular references

Circular references is a computational problem, which cannot be resolved by a computer because it has no logical beginning and end, for example: Enable question Q1 if question Q2 is enabled, and enable question Q2 if question Q1 is enabled.

In this example each of the questions Q1 and Q2 depends on each other, and there is no way to establish whether both should be asked or none at all.

Lookup Tables

Overview

Lookup tables are reference tables that may be used in the syntax expressions, for example in validation and enabling conditions. Lookup tables are prepared as external tab-delimited files and uploaded to the questionnaire in the Designer.

We use lookup tables to find content by some code and apply that content in validations and enabling conditions as part of larger expressions.

Lookup tables contain numeric data: the lookup code must be integer, while the content may be integer or a floating point value. Lookup tables are not suitable to store string content. The lookup code is often a code of an item in a price survey, occupational code in a labor force survey, or a code of crop in an agricultural survey. It may also be a combination code of two or more codes (for example a district code and a locality code).

Reusable Categories

Survey Solutions provides two question types that make use of categorical selections, which are the Single-Select Categorical and Multi-Select Categorical questions. Each of them allows the user to select from a list of categories with the difference of whether only one selection is allowed (single-select) or more than one selections (multi-select) are permitted. Each of these question types has multiple presentations, such as with choice buttons, or with a search option, etc (see Overview: Categorical question types).

Panel of Advanced Instruments

The panel of advanced instruments located at the left side of the questionnaire Designer interface provides access to the additional tools for configuring the questionnaire:

		Table of contents Displays a panel showing all the sections within the questionnaire.
		Questionnaire description and survey information Additional meta information about the questionnaire and the survey.
		Translations Manage translations in multilingual questionnaires. (more info)
		Reusable categories Add, edit, and delete sets of categories used in categorical questions. (more info)
		Scenarios Manage testing scenarios. (more info)
		Macros Define and describe syntax macros. (more info)
		Lookup tables Manage reference tables used for looking up values. (more info)
		Attachments Manage questionnaire attachments. (more info)
		Comments Review and navigate to comments in the questionnaire. (more info)
		Critical rules Define any critical rules that must be checked before submission of an interview based on this questionnaire. (more info)

Comments in Designer

Comments in Designer are an essential tool for collaboration of multiple users working on the same questionnaire. Each of the collaborators may leave comments to questions, indicating potential problems in implementation, or suggesting improvements. For example, It is common for the reviewers, that have a shared access to a questionnaire to leave the comments for the original author.

The full list of comments in all sections of the questionnaire can be seen in the comments tool, which is accessible from the toolbar. Often the comments represent a kind of to-do list:

Multilingual Questionnaires

This article describes composing multilingual questionnaires. For switching the language of the Survey Solutions software itself and supported languages refer to the localization overview article.

Often times researchers work in contexts where respondents of a survey speak different languages. Therefore, to administer surveys and collect higher quality data it is important to have questionnaires in the corresponding language. In Survey Solutions, you can create multilingual questionnaires directly in Designer as follows:

Macros

Macros simplify writing complicated expressions with repetitive sub-expressions. Consider for example, that several questions in the questionnaire are applicable to one group of persons, such as women of child-bearing age (let’s say 15-44 years old, exact numbers are of no particular importance here). Suppose the variable for age is age, and for gender is sex with values 1 corresponding to males, and 2 to females. Then the following macro can be defined:
 

Questionnaire Attachments

In some situations pictures become an indispensable tool to establish the true meaning of e.g. categories: small, medium, large. Pictures can be added to the questionnaire wherever a static text element is possible (including inside rosters and subsections). The same attachment can be displayed in multiple places in the questionnaire. Check the supported formats in Multimedia Reference.

To add an attachment (image) to your questionnaire:
 

1. Click on the paper clip icon on the toolbar on the left hand side.

   June 15, 2016