Form Design Tutorial

Pages:

In SURVEYWin, a form is organized as a list of pages, each of which can have several questions. When you are designing a form, you can use the Design menu and the List of pages to navigate through the list of pages.

The form design window shows one of the pages from your form. You may change pages by clicking on Prev and Next in the List of pages window, or by selecting Page | Previous or Page | Next from the menu at the top of the screen.

If you cannot see the List of pages window, select Page | List of pages from the menu. You can select the pages to use and their order with the Script button on the toolbar, or from Page | Rearrange pages from the menu bar.

Adding a question:

The floating window titled Compose question is where you type in new questions or edit questions that are already on the page. Each question is composed of two objects: the question text and the response set.

To make a new question, select Question | Create new question from the menu. The Compose question window will pop up, where you may type in the text for your question. Then, select Question type from the local menu to set the type of question. When you have finished this, select OK in the question properties window, then select Apply from the local menu. Your question will be placed on the page.

You may also add a question by clicking on the button at the top of the toolbar. After you write a question and select Apply, your question is applied to the current page. You may move a question within the page by clicking on the question to select it so that handles appear, then clicking the mouse in the middle of the area bordered by the handles and dragging the question where you want it.

The term ‘question’ normally means the question text combined with its associated response set. This is an object you can manipulate. If you want to change a question’s response set you may do it any time by simply selecting Response | Switch from the top menu and selecting or creating a new response set. Whenever you compose a new question, it is added to the master list of questions. This meadns that you may move this same question from page to page until you decide where you want it or copy it to other forms. You may repeat it in the same form if you want to provide several opportunities for answering the same question.

Keep in mind that the question consists of both text and response, and is unique. If you have several questions in your form with similar text, as is often true with training evaluations or customer satisfaction forms, each of these questions are separate and unique. You will not have to rewrite a response set. It can be chosen repeatedly from its library. The program will reproduce it for the text to which you attach it. To replicate similar text, select Compose question | File | Create a clone, then be sure to alter it in some way to distinguish the clone from the original question in Analysis.

See also Clone Pages.

The reason that the question text needs to be rewritten is that this represents a ‘fieldname’ in which data is stored. You want to keep the data for your separate questions also separate. The program assigns different fieldnames to each question so you do not have to do this. However, we recommend that you differentiate your identical sounding question text by putting a number in front, such as ‘Q1. How important is this to you?’ versus ‘Q2. How important is this to you?’ Or, use 1a. and 2a. to differentiate them. The reason you do this is that in Analysis you will see the initial portion of the question and you want to be able to tell one question from another. If you forget, don’t worry: you can go back and edit your question text very easily.

Note: When you are using electronic form design, do not place questions off the main screen. Although there are scroll bars on the right and bottom edges of the screen, the user does not have them in data entry. Therefore, any question that you place off of the main screen area in electronic form design will not be seen by your users when they take your survey.

There are several ways to edit questions. The easiest way is to select Question | Modify from the menu, change your text in the Compose question window, and use Apply to place the question on the page.

Object Manipulation:

1. Click on the Project name box. When a drop down list of all of the sample projects appears, select the project titled DEMOFORM.
2. Next select Form design | Electronic form from the menu box.
3. When the Form Design window appears, there will be a small window titled List of pages floating on the Form design window. Select the Prev option from the List of pages window.
4. Click on the text question that is at the top of the screen. Notice that when you select the question, eight black squares, called handles, appear around the question. Click on the right middle handle and drag it to the left. You will notice that the question text has 'wrapped' itself to fit inside the smaller box created by the handles. If you drag the right middle handle out again, the text will take on its former appearance.
5. Now click on the question again and hold down the mouse button. You will notice that the mouse pointer has turned into a cross hairs. This signifies that you can now reposition the question anywhere on the screen. Practice dragging the question to various locations on the screen.
6. As you moved the question around the screen, the response buttons moved with the question. If you desire to move the response buttons but not move the question, click on the response buttons and drag them to a different location on the screen.
7. Now click on the Save button located at the bottom of the screen. This button may be moved around the screen just as the question and response buttons were. Also, this button may be resized by dragging the handles. For example, click on the right middle handle and move it to the left. The next button will be resized to fit the shape of the handles.