New Survey System Version 9.5
21/05/2007
The Survey System 9.5 is the most complete software package available for working with telephone, online and printed questionnaires. It handles all phases of survey projects, from creating questionnaires through data entry, telephone or PDA interviewing or email or Web page Internet surveys to producing tables, graphics and text reports.
If you do market research or public opinion polls or measure employee satisfaction or association membership opinions or otherwise need to know what people think,
The Survey System 9.5 can help.
"The Survey System does most of the things I want and keeps getting better.
" - Maggie Truscott, Truscott Research.
New Question Instructions Features
Locking the Question List
The Disable Editing via the Question List choice in the General Information window prevents you from accidentally dragging a question to a different position in the file. It also disables the ability to insert, delete or edit questions by selecting them from the list. An Editing Disabled message appears at the top right of the list while editing is disabled. You can still use the Instructions/Question menu to change a file while editing via the question list is disabled.
If you click on a question in the list while editing is disabled, a report of the answers to the question will appear. Report is also a choice on the pop-up menu that appears for questions when editing is not disabled.
Special Questions
The Special Kind of Question choice is used to for various kinds of information TSS can add to individual questionnaires in the Data File. The different kinds are selected in the Special Type field, which appears when this kind of question is selected. The types include Interviewer, Date, Time, Duration (of an interview or Web survey), Call Result, Password, Email Address, Email Name, IP Address, Question Times and Imported Variables. These replace configuration choices and other specifications in earlier versions of TSS.
You can select any special type of question, but some of them only apply during certain kinds of data entry. For example, Password, Email Address, Email Name, IP Address are only collected during Web surveys.
If you select one of the Imported Variables types, you must specify the Number of Letters to save. When you first specify you want to use Imported Variable 1 and there is a current Sample File or Password File with imported variables, TSS will ask if you want the program to get the variable specifications from the Sample File or Password File. If you choose Yes, TSS will add a question for each imported variable. Note that this special feature only works when you adding questions to the end of a file, not when you are inserting a single question into the middle of a file.
The other types of special questions take up fixed numbers of columns in the Data File. The Question Times choice is a special case. It takes up eight columns, plus four columns per question. We recommend you specify it as the last question in the file. If you later need additional questions, insert them before this question, ideally before all special questions. If you add questions after you add a question times question, use the Reassign Columns feature to expand the question times question to have room for the new questions’times. If you do not do so, the times for the new questions will not be recorded.
The special question types never appear during interviewing or Web surveys. You do not need to add logic to skip them. They can optionally appear on appropriate reports.
Other Question Instruction Changes
The Name field is optional. If you enter a question name, the name will appear instead of the question label on pop-up lists of questions. It will also appear in a header you choose to have as part of an exported data file. You can specify names for some questions and not others, if you wish.
The Background icon lets you toggle the background of the Question Label field from white to black. The latter can be useful, if you want the text to be in a very light color for display on a dark background on a web page survey. This choice only affects the display of this field. It does not affect surveys or reports. You can select a background color in the Web Questionnaire and Web Reports Options windows.
If you check Require Answer, you can optionally use the Require Only This Many Answers field to specify that at least a certain number of answers are given. This number becomes the minimum number of responses that must be given to a multiple choice question or the minimum number of sub-questions of a numeric or answer grid question that must be answered. If you check Require Answer, but do not specify a number, then respondents must give at least one answer to a multiple choice question or answer all sub-questions of a numeric or answer grid question.
If you leave the Minimum Value field blank for a numeric question sub-question blank, then 0 will be the minimum acceptable answer. You can use negative minimum values, if you want to use a scale like -5 to 5. You can also specify minimum values for answer grid questions. Like maximum values, these do not apply to web surveys or to Data/Interview when showing grids, since in these cases the answer grid column values determine what answers can be selected.
Answers to Verbatim questions can have line breaks. To enter a line break in a Data/Interview or when editing verbatims in View Data, type Ctrl-Enter. To enter a line break in a Web survey, just type Enter.
New Logic Features
Only Previous
You can specify up to three Previous Questions in an Only Previous instruction. Answers that are specified in any of the previous questions will be included in the current question.
If the previous question is a numeric or answer grid question, you can show choices or sub-questions based on which of the previous sub-questions received the highest or lowest answers (e.g. ratings). To see the ones that received the highest answers, enter “H” in the AG/Numeric Q Values field. To see the ones that received the lowest answers, enter “L.”
The Avoid if only 1 row shown choice tells TSS to skip the question, if only one choice or sub-question would be shown.
Other, Specify
You can designate a verbatim question to be an “other, specify” answer space for the previous question. To do so, choose the Other, Specify logic instruction. Enter the number of the answer choice or sub-question to which it should be attached. This instruction works for verbatims that immediately follow a multiple choice, numeric or answer grid question.
You can have more than one other, specify verbatim following a single multiple choice, numeric or answer grid question. Each verbatim question must have its own other, specify instruction.
For compatibility with earlier versions of TSS, verbatims with blank labels are also treated as other, specify verbatims for the last answer choice or sub-question of the previous question.
Calculate
You can use an “R” in an instruction to indicate a random value. You must follow the R with a number that represents the highest possible value. For example, “R4” tells The Survey System to find a random integer between 1 and 4. If the result question is a multiple choice question that allows the same number of responses as the highest value, The Survey System will store that many random numbers in the responses. For the R4 example, the program might store 2,4,1,3 as the four responses to a question.
Randomise Answers and Randomise Questions
These instructions now offer the alternative of getting the order in which to show the answer choices or questions from a previously saved order, instead of creating a new random order. To use a previously saved order, enter the question number in the Random Order Source Question field. The order source question must be a multiple choice question that allows as many responses as the number of random values you need for the randomise answers or randomise questions instruction. For the randomise questions instruction, that number is the number of answer choices or sub-questions, less the number you specified in the Leave at End field.
The usual source for the a previously saved order is the result of a calculate instruction that include a random value instruction.
New Data Menu Features
The Data menu no longer shows the Keypunch and List Data choices by default. These have been replaced by new Browse choice. Because the Browse choice uses the current question file to display the data, while these older choices show whatever is in the file, character by character, these older choices may sometimes be useful in diagnosing problems. You can make the Keypunch and List Data choices available by selecting Enable Keypunch Features on the Miscellaneous page of the Configuration window.
Viewing the Data File
Use the View Data File choice on the Data menu to see all the data in the data file in a grid or spreadsheet format. You can either view the data by Question or by Character.
By question shows the answers to a single multiple choice question or an answer grid or numeric sub-question in a column. If a question allows more than one response or sub-question per person, each allowed response or sub-question will be in a separate column.
By character shows the contents of each data column in a grid column.
When viewing by question the spreadsheet columns will be labeled with question names, if you have specified them. Any questions without names will be labeled with a “Q” and the question number (e.g., “Q 3”). If a multiple choice question allows more than one response per person or a numeric or answer grid question has more than one sub-question, there will be a column for each response or sub-question. These will be distinguished with letters (e.g., “Q 7 a” or “Prod Rating b”).
You can use the find field and the Find and Find Next buttons to search the file for a particular answer or range of numeric answers (e.g. “3-7”). Click on the label of the column you want to search before using these buttons.
You can use the Sort Ascending and Sort Descending buttons to change the viewing order of the data records. Click on the label of the column on which you wish to sort before using these buttons. These buttons only change the order of records in this window. They do not change their order in the Data File itself. You can use the Sort Data File feature on the Data menu, if you need to change the order of the file itself.
You can edit the data as needed. The Survey System will only let you enter non-numeric characters in columns that represent verbatim questions and some special questions. It will not let you enter invalid answers to multiple choice questions. If you have specified maximum values in the question instructions for numeric or answer grid questions, program will not let you enter higher values.
You can Add a new record to the bottom of the data file, Insert records in the middle and Delete records using the corresponding buttons. Note that you cannot insert or add records after using either of the Sort buttons.
If you make any changes to the file, they will all be saved when you use the Save button. Use the Cancel button, if you do not want to save the changes.
The Print button prints a copy of the full spreadsheet, not just what is visible in the window.
When viewing by question some columns will be wider than others, depending on the number of digits or letters allowed for each question. You can use the Change Column Widths button to specify the minimum and maximum widths of the columns in characters. You can also drag an individual column to change its width. The minimum and maximum widths are saved between visits to this window. Changes made by dragging columns are not.
If you are viewing by character, and there are more than 1000 characters in the file, TSS will ask you which columns to show before it shows the grid. We recommend you do not view more than 2000 columns at a time. It takes the program a long time to format more columns. While the program can format 1000 columns in a few seconds, and 2000 in less than a minute, it could take over a half hour to format 10000 columns. If you view the first 2000 columns in a file, you can very quickly see the next 2000 columns, since the program would not have to reformat the grid.
Checking Skip Patterns
The List People/Check Skip Patterns Data menu choice uses the skip, delayed skip and avoid instructions in the current Question File to determine which questions should be skipped.
You have three choices as to what the program should do: List Violations, List and Fix Violations or Fix Only. The fix options can be very useful, but since they delete the answers to any questions that were skipped, they can be dangerous. The danger is that you might have skipped a question, but still want the data that is in that question. For example, you might always skip over a question that holds the result of a calculation. You might also have two questions that refer to the same data for logic or reporting reasons and skip over one of them. If you use the fix feature in either of these cases, data would be lost. To help guard against losing data The Survey System will ask you to confirm you want to fix violations before it does so.
If you have one or more questions like the examples mentioned, you can either create a copy of the Question File, delete the problem questions and use the copy to fix violations, or you can delete the skip logic from those questions before using this feature.
Special questions, just as date and time and data imported from a Password or Sample File are not a problem. The Survey System will never delete data from them.
There are two situations that would always cause problems. One is if you have any instructions to skip backward (i.e. to a lower-numbered question). The other is if you have any instructions to skip out of a series of questions that were asked in a random order. Using the 9999 codes to avoid questions in a random series does not cause a problem, but skipping to a specific question number would likely lead to data loss when fixing skip violations. If either of these situations apply, the program will show you a message to that effect. Then either choose the List Violations (only) choice, or remove the problem skips from the Question File before fixing violations.
Data Transformations
The Data Transformations windows have a List Questions button. You can use it instead of entering data columns directly. When selecting a question from the list to get the result of the transformation, you can only select one question. When selecting questions for existing variables, you can select multiple questions at once.
You can select more variables than the transformation allows from the list. Only as many variables as the transformation allows will be used. Multiple choice questions that allow more than one response per person count as as many variables as responses allowed. Numeric or answer grid questions that have more than one sub-question count as as many variables as sub-questions.
The data columns used by the selected questions will appear in the fields.
New Produce Tables Feature
You can save tables into XLS files, using the XLS button in the Produce Tables window. You can put as many tables as you like into a single file, subject to the XLS limit of 64,000 rows. You can only put tables into an XLS file by making that choice in this window. You cannot produce a table to the screen and then save it in this format. XLS files are created separately from the word processor format used for other kinds of files.
Note that you must have Excel present on your PC in order to be able to produce XLS files.
New Web Survey Features
Question Format Choices
If you check the Let Labels Wrap choice, answer grid row labels will automatically wrap to fit the available space. The available space is determined by the width of the browser window. The grid will fill the width of the window, but not be wider than the window, as long as the answer choice columns can all fit in the width of the window, with some room for the sub-question labels. This choice does not affect answer grid questions that have a width specified for the sub-question labels in the Answer Grid Columns window.
Page Setup Choices
Graphic Radio Buttons and Checkboxes
The Use Graphic Buttons choice lets you specify image files to be used in the place of normal HTML radio buttons and checkboxes. Custom buttons can give your surveys a very distinctive look. If you make this choice, you need to specify files for both radio buttons (for single-response questions) and checkboxes (for multiple-response questions) in both unchecked and checked states. Include extensions in the names of the image files. Example files you can use are supplied.
End Page Choices
Let Respondents See a Summary of Their Answers
You can let respondents see a summary of their answers in the form of a questionnaire showing answers report. To do so check the Enable box. Then choose whether to use a Text or Graphic link. Next enter the text you want to appear as the link or the name of the graphic file. Include an extension in the name of the image file. If you choose a graphic link, the text link text becomes Alt text for the image.
If you do not want to let respondents see this report, either choose Text, but do not enter any text, or Graphic, but do not enter the name of a file.
Note that you must use Web/Setup Reports, if you want respondents to be able to see these reports.
Clicking on Words to Select Them
Create a multiple choice question with one word per answer choice. Allow as many responses as words you want respondents to be able to select.
Indicate any line breaks you want when the words are presented by using the line break icon or typing the pipe character (“|”) at the ends of the words you want to end lines.
Use the Interview Logic button and choose Click on Words as the type of instruction. Then enter the Normal Background Color, for words that are not selected, and the
Highlighted Background Color, for words that are selected. You can make the normal color the same as the page background, if you wish.
Example: FFFFFF=White
Limitations
The question with words to click must be the first question on the page. There may be following questions.
The question will not work if a person has turned off JavaScript (very few people do so, but there may be someone).
Clicking on Parts of a Composite Picture to Select Them
To set up a question to show a composite image with parts to click on:
Create a composite picture composed of multiple image files. The files represent parts of horizontal slices through the image. All the images in a particular horizontal slice must be the same height. They may be different widths. You may have different numbers of images in different horizontal slices.
The images must all have the same base name, differing only by a number at the end. Numbers under 10 must have a leading zero, for example: “meatball01.jpg,” “meatball02.jpg”.
Create “selected” versions of the images. The picture will change to show these versions when the respondent clicks on images. You do not need to create “selected” versions of any images you do not want respondents to be able to select.
The selected versions of the images must have the same names as the corresponding main images, but with some distinguishing characters at the end. For example “_x,” with a complete name being “meatball01_x.jpg.”
Create a multiple choice question with an answer choice that corresponds to each image. There needs to be a choice for all image files, including any that will not be able to be selected. If you do not want to be able to select a particular image, use “-“ as its label. This label will not appear on reports. It also tells The Survey System that there is no selected version of the image file.
Indicate the last image in a horizontal slice by using the line break icon or typing the pipe character (“|”) at the end of the labels for the images you want to slices.
Allow as many responses as images that can be selected. This question will be used for reports showing how many times each part of the composite picture was selected, as well as to hold the data.
Use the Interview Logic button and choose Click on Images as the type of instruction. Then enter the Base File Name, including the file name extension (e.g.,“meatball01.jpg”). Do not include a path. Then enter the extra character(s) that distinguish the selected versions of the image files as the Selected Extension.
Limitations
The question with words to click must be the first question on the page. There may be following questions.
The question will not work if a person has turned off JavaScript (very few people do so, but there may be someone).
Using Sliders to Enter Numbers
You can use horizontal sliders to let people enter the answers to numeric questions with a mouse. They can either drag a slide or click on a position in the bar behind the slide. Some of the instructions for using sliders affect all of the sliders you use in a particular survey. You specify these instructions on the Page Setup page of the Web Questionnaire Options window. Other instruction apply only to specific questions. You specify those instructions in the Question Instructions: Web Options window.OO
Overall Slider Choices
A slider consists of an image the respondent can slide right or left over a background bar. You must specify a main Background file, along with files for the Left and Right ends of the bar. You can use the same file for both the left and right ends, if you wish. You must also specify the image that will be the Slide. The image files must be GIF or JPEG format. Include the extension with the name of the file (e.g., “slideBx.gif”). These files should be located in the current default folder. Samples with names that start “slide” are included.
Specify a Default Width for the background bars. You can specify a different width for the bars for a particular question as part of the instructions for that question.
The width of the background image file does not matter. You can use a one pixel wide background image file. It will be repeated or stretched as need to reach this width. In contrast the height of the background image file will determine the height of the bars.
Slider Choices for Individual Questions
The Sliders section of the Question Instructions: Web Options window is enabled for numeric questions. Check the Use Sliders box, if you want to use sliders for this question.
You can specify the Width of the slider bars, or leave the Width field blank or 0 to use the default width set in the Web Questionnaire Options.
• All the sliders on a page will use the width specified for the first slider question on the page.
You can choose to have the numbers specified using the slider have either 0 or 1 Decimal Place. You must also specify at least three digits for your answers in order to be able to save decimal places in your data.
The Initial Value determines the initial position of the slide over the bar. The same value applies to all the sliders for a particular question. The minimum and maximum values of the sliders are the minimum and maximum values set for each sub-question in the Question Instructions window.
Labels above the sliders are optional. If you enter Left and Right labels, they will appear above the left and right ends of the top bar for the question. If you also enter a Center label, it will appear above the center of the top bar. The labels will appear left, right and center aligned. If you want to indicate specific points on the bars, you can enter “<br>” and a character such as “|” after a label. For example, a center label “Not sure<br>|” would appear as Not Sure | over the center of the bar.
The Survey System will also show text fields to the right of the slides that will show the values selected by the slides. If you do not want this field to show, you can check the Suppress Number Fields box.
Showing Labels on Both the Left and Right Sides of Sliders
To show sub-question labels on both the left and right sides of sliders, enter the label for the left side. Then use the split button or type “}{“ as a divider, and enter the label for the right side. If you use either method of indicating a split, The Survey System will not show a field with the value selected by the slide. If you only want labels on the left, but also want to suppress the field showing the selected value, you can indicate a split at the end of the label.
Note: The check total logic instruction does not work with sliders.
Web Reports
Instant Filters
You can allow people to select instant filters when producing reports. If you choose to do so, all multiple choice questions will be available for instant filters, except for those questions that are excluded from web reports or excluded from instant filters in the Questionnaire Instructions/Web Options window.
The produce page will show a list of questions available as instant filters. Users can select as many as they want to apply simultaneously. If they select any, the next page they see will show a field for each of the questions showing the answer choices. Users can select as many choices for each question as desired. The instant filter page label will appear at the top of the page.
Individual Answers Reports
You can use the Individual Answers page of the Web Report Options window to set up reports that show all the answers given by one person. These are similar to the questionnaire forms showing a person’s answers you can produce on the desktop.
You can choose which questionnaires in the data file to see by their ID (questionnaire) Numbers and/or by searching a specified Data Range (range of columns) for matching values. You can choose neither, one or both options on the Individual Answers page. You can edit the labels that will appear on the Produce Page for these options and on the button used to produce these reports on the Produce Labels page.
If you go to the Produce Page for a report that includes the ID numbers option, leave the ID numbers field blank and click on the Individual Answer button, TSS will show you the last questionnaire in the data file. If you enter a number that is not the last number in the file, you will have the option to continue on to the next questionnaire after seeing the one corresponding to the number you enter.
If you specify a answer for a data range, TSS will show the first questionnaire in the file that matches what you enter. Then you can go on and see the next match. Remember to enter the code of the desired answer, not the label used for the code.
Individual answers reports will include questions the person did not choose to answer, but will not include questions that were skipped due to logic instructions.
You can allow respondents to see an individual answers report showing their own answers. To do so you must specify Let Respondents See a Summary of Their Answers choices when you create the Web questionnaire and also set up Web reports. Note that showing respondents this report does not let them change their answers.
Importing Password, Address and Sample Files
Check Save Instuctions to save the instructions you specify in the Import windows. This feature makes it very easy to make sure that if you import a sample in two or more waves, all waves correspond exactly. This is important when you merge Password, Address or Sample Files. To use instructions you have previously saved, use the Get Instructions button.
Any additional information you import along with the variables you specify in the Import window is always saved in a fixed format (each variable occupies the same number of characters in each record). If you use the Variable Lengths button, each variable will be allotted the number of characters you specify. If not, TSS will automatically determine how many characters are needed for each variable by reading the file and finding the longest entry for each variable. Both approaches work. The main advantage of using the button and specifying variable lengths yourself is that you can specify round numbers for variables such as company name. Another is that you can choose that a particular variable in the source file will not be imported by making its length “0.”
Regardless of whether or nor you specify variable lengths yourself, you must specify a Number of Characters to Import to have other besides the ones named in the Import window saved into your file.
If you want variables copied from a Password, Address or Sample File into the Data File, you must use the Special kind of question in the Question Instructions window. You will need to specify a separate special question for each variable you want copied.
Sample Management
You can modify result codes and change sample file specifications while people are interviewing. Each interview station checks for these changes every five minutes.
You can edit all the imported information and the details of the last call attempt for each phone number in a grid (spreadsheet) form. If you change the result of the last call to schedule callback, the Make Callback Appointment window will appear to let you schedule the call.
You can scroll down the list to find a number you want to change or use the Find field and the Find and Find Next buttons to search a column for specified characters.
Miscellaneous
The Configuration/Miscellaneous choice Use Question File Folder as Study Folder tells TSS to automatically switch the default study folder to the folder that holds the current Question File. In other words, if this choice is active and you open a Question File in a different folder, that folder becomes the default folder.