Question Details

The Question Details page is where you add text and answer options to the question. The functionality here is identical to that in a standard Forsta Plus survey. Refer to the separate Professional Authoring documentation for further information.

Question Properties

The question objects in the Panel Variables toolbox have a range of properties and settings that you can customized via the property sheets. The property sheet will always display the type and name/title of the active object - . To open the Properties pane for a question:

• In the Panel Variables toolbox, right-click on the question and select Properties.

Or

• Double-click on the question or right-click on it and select Edit to open the Question Details page, then click the Show/Hide Properties button in the Details page toolbar.

Figure 1 - The Properties pane for a Single question

Note: The Properties pane contains different properties depending on the type of question and the property selections made. The list below describes all the properties that may appear.

The properties available are:

• Field Width – specifies the number of characters assigned to responses to this question in the database and when exporting to fixed-width ASCII files. The default Field Width for Single questions is 32 characters. If the Field Width is not defined for an Open text question, it will be unlimited. If defined, the respondent will be prevented from entering more characters than the specified in Field width.
• Indexed – if selected, an index is created on this field in the database the next time you generate the database. Indexes improve performance in areas such as 1) aggregated and verbatim reporting when filtering on fields with indexes, 2) searching in individual reporting and in survey data editing (when search fields are indexed), and 3) data imports where the key field is indexed. Note that indexes should be used only when needed, as responses take longer to store the more indexes there are. This can lead to a performance reduction during interviewing. Also, the database will be unavailable for other processes the first time it is regenerated after the index property is set. Forsta Support therefore recommends against setting new indexes and regenerating a survey while respondents are answering the survey.
• Variable Type - there may be a time when your panel variables include a question with many answer alternatives, that you wish to simplify for the report. A question can therefore be:
• Normal - an ordinary question object.
• Recoded variable - turns this question into a recoded variable, which will not be displayed in the interview. You can predefine complex recoding rules in SQL or JScript. Note that the values for recoded variables must be updated "manually" (go to Calculate Variables for more information). Refer to the Professional Authoring documentation for further information on recoding.
• Numeric – check to specify that the field shall only accept numerical characters.
• Total Digits – specify the total number of digits the field can contain.
• Decimal Places – specify the maximum number of decimal places allowed.
• Lower/Upper Limit – specify an upper and/or a lower limit for the number.
• Lower/Upper Limit Type – specify the limit type; either = or <=/>= as appropriate.
• Data Edit Access Required – this is the editing access permission level that users must have to be able to edit the date for this question in the database column. Users with editing access permissions lower than this level will not be able to edit the data for this question. Go to the Panel Utilities > Panel Overview page > Permissions tab to allocate the appropriate permission levels to the users (go to Access Levels for more information). The options here are:
• Low – all users with normal access permission can edit the data in this column.
• Medium – only users with access levels Medium or High can edit the data in this column.
• High – only users with access level High can edit the data in this column.
• Boolean – applicable for Single questions. If selected, the question can have only two options, and the codes must be 0 and 1. If you set an existing question to Boolean and that question had more than two answer options, then all the options except the first two will be deleted.
• Characteristic – the group to which the data column is to be allocated. The options are:
• Normal – columns for which you expect the majority of operations will be reading of the data contained.
• Recoded – columns for which you expect the majority of operations will be writing of data.
• Space Consuming – columns for which you expect the data contained will usually take a lot of space in the database, for example free-text fields.
• Loop Support – defines a column as “Job-specific” information. Some information in the database is related to the survey job rather than to the specific panelist. When a number of panelists are selected for the same job, then that job information could be repeated for every panelist. To avoid expanding the database with repeated information, job-specific information is held in a separate section of the database. That section is then referred to for each panelist it applies to.
• Accept Leading Zeros – check this box if you want the field in the expression builder to accept leading zeros.
• Unique – check if every field in the column is to be unique. Use this for passwords, login names etc.
• Default Value - type a value into this field to specify the value as default. The respondent will then be given this answer unless they enter a different answer.
• Question Category - define a category for the question. A Reportal user can then filter on the question categories when using hitlists in single view in Reportal. Refer to the Reportal documentation for further details.
• Deleted – will be checked if the question has been deleted from the Panel Variables toolbox (go to Deleting an Object for more information). Uncheck to undelete the question (go to Undeleting an Object for more information). Note that you can view deleted questions by right-clicking on the Panel Portal name in the tree and selecting Show Deleted. Deleted questions will then be shown “pale” until Hide Deleted is selected.

Note: Some questions are required in a database by default, and these questions will be added automatically when you create a new database. As the information contained in these questions is required, some of the properties for these questions are not accessible and cannot be changed.

Characteristic Property

To improve accessibility and reduce processing times, the database is divided into sections. The sections group the columns together depending on the type of processing expected to be most usual in the columns. For example, for some columns most of the processing will involve reading the data contained, while for other columns most of the processing will involve writing data to the column. Other columns are expected to use a lot more file space than others, as a “free text” character uses eight times more space than a Boolean character. Use the Characteristic property to specify which group the column will be allocated to.

When the database needs to process information, it will go first to the group containing the columns with the appropriate characteristic. For example, if a database process is to write some data to a column, then the system will look for that column first in the Recode group. If the system finds the column in that group then it will perform the process. If it does not find the column there, then it will look in the other groups. This procedure will save considerable processing time, as otherwise the system must look through the entire database each time it needs to conduct a process.