Edit Form Window

Beginning Tutorial - Edit Form Window

Menu Items:

Questions New Page

Indicates the start of a new survey page. A page title signals the beginning of a new page. Use pages to organize your form into sections. On muti-page forms, the Page acts as the break between pages.

This menu item is equivalent to pressing the New Page button located on the toolbar.

Questions New Question

This will create a new, default question in the Questions box. This default question may then be edited on the right half of the window. It will have the text, "Type your question text here" and will be added to the end of the current list of questions.

This menu item is equivalent to pressing the New Question button located on the toolbar.

Questions New Response

This will create a new, default response in the Responses box. It will be added to the end of the current list of responses and contain the text "Type your response text here." This default response may be edited in the Response Text and Response Code boxes.

This menu item is equivalent to pressing the New Response button located on the toolbar.

Question Types:

EZSurvey lets you write several types of questions, as well as some non-questions (text and titles). The questions are listed here; the non-questions are listed below.

Write-in text
Open-ended questions. Specify the maximum number of characters in the length box. EZSurvey does not limit this length, however other programs used for storing/analyzing data may impose their own limit.

Password
Passwords are masked upon input, and show up as asterisks.

Write-in Number
Free-form write-in. Specify the maximum number of digits in the length box. When you receive responses:

Symbols like $ and % will be ignored.
Numbers like 0x0AFE are considered hexadecimal, but numbers like 03254 are not considered octal.
Numbers like 123.456,789 will be converted to 123456.789 when they are read from email messages or imported from a database.

Single Choice

Weighted Score
Similar to single choice, but the answers have an importance given by the code. Use this for "On a scale from 1 to 5, how do you feel..." type questions. The responses appear with radio buttons.

Check All That Apply
Pick several responses from a list of options (Check all that apply) type questions.

Single List
Similar to single choice, except that it appears as a drop-down list on a web page. These questions are also interchangeable with Single choice and Weighted score.

Multiple List
Similar to check all that apply, except that it appears as a scrolling list on a web page.

Combo box
This is a hybrid between write-in text and a multiple list. Use this when someone may type in an answer or select a standard answer from a list.

Rank Order
Rank several choices in order of importance. Each response appears next to a box in which to type a number.

Hidden
This is an invisible question for a web page. These are used for Follow up questions and to pass information that the survey participant cannot see.

Date
An eight digit date, stored in the form YYYYMMDD. When importing web data, or reading email, EZSurvey can recognize dates of the forms:

12/19/2006 (All versions) 19-DEC-2006 (All versions) DEC 19, 2006 (All versions) 20061219 (All versions)

Time
A six digit time of the form HHMMSS. EZSurvey can recognize time like 12:31:21.

Note: It is not recommended to describe phone numbers, social-security numbers, or zip codes as Write-in number fields. They should be defined as Write-in text fields. Even though they have numbers, they are properly described as text. If you do make them Write-in number fields, EZSurvey will make nonsensical calculations from them such as sums of phone numbers.
Note: If you are storing account, invoice, or identification numbers, don't bother to write leading zeros. That is, instead of writing 0042536, simply write 42536. That way, if you need to add an extra digit, you won't have to update the old numbers. EZSurvey is able to tell the difference between numbers and text, and will handle them accordingly.

Plain text
Instructions to the person filling out your form. Use Plain text to add any text to the page. Plain text questions are also used to add HTML formatting objects to your form.

ToolButton
Toolbuttons allow you to add JavaScript buttons to a web form, that perform such useful tasks as pop-up help and custom scripts.

Question Options:

The text of the question

Question text can be any length. If you want your questions to be numbered, you should include the number as part of the question text. EZSurvey can number the questions for you using Question Renumber questions, and remove the numbers with Question Un-number questions.

A short description for your use only

A short text description for the question (one or two words), to use in place of the longer questions text. This will show up on the Questions box, on the database headers, and in your analysis summary in place of the longer question text. If you leave this box blank, the first few words of the question text will appear in the question list.

Fieldname

A fieldname is a short name that the database system uses to identify your question. The first character of a fieldname should be a capital letter from A to Z. After that, a fieldname may contain numbers and underlines. EZSurvey has the option of allowing long field names, but by default the limit is 10 characters. If you are using an separate database or analysis tool, that software may have a fieldname length limit or other naming conventions you must follow.

You should not change the fieldname after you have data in your database, or EZSurvey will not be able to associate it correctly with the question.

There are a few fieldnames that are reserved in EZSurvey. They are:

EMAIL, STATUS, HOST, DATE, TIME, _SESSION, IFMUID, and IFMUID1

These fields are used for tracking responses coming from email surveys and web surveys with respondent tracking. Other fieldnames beginning with underlines (like _PASSWORD) may be used by the web server, depending on the type of survey.

Length (write-in questions only)

The question length is the number of characters that the database will allocate for storing responses. Thus, the question lengths should be large enough to accommodate any response you will receive. Typical lengths and types are:

Names and addresses - Text(30)
Email Addresses - Text(50)
Zip codes - Text(10: Mask with NNNNN-NNNN)
Phone numbers - Text(10: Mask with NNN-NNN-NNNN)
(with extensions) - Text(17: Mask with (NNN-NNN-NNNNxNNNN))
Comments - Text(240)
Ages - Number(3)
Number - Number(10)
Prices - Number(4-10: Do not use an input mask)
Social security number - Text(11: Mask with NNN-NN-NNNN)
Employer Identification number - Text(10: Mask with NN-NNNNNNN)

EZSurvey allows write-in text to be longer than 255 characters, but other database programs (like Excel, Access, Oracle...) may not. If you will need this compatibility, restrain the length of your comment questions to 255.
For information on skips, jumps, changing the next page and using question libraries, follow the links at the bottom.

Response Options:

Response code

The response code is what the database uses to identify responses. You may accept the default values that EZSurvey assigns, or input your own. For a "Don't know" or "Not applicable" response, code should be a letter such as X, Y, or Z. Both EZSurvey and EZReport have features to hide responses with codes X, Y and Z. Response codes have a length which is set when you create the question. Spaces are not allowed in response codes. If you must have visible spaces (for piping) use the HTML character   to add a visible space.

Response Text

The response text can be any length, though it should be short enough to make the question easily readable. For Combo box questions, you do not need to type in any response text.