Forms info: Modifying

Opening a form for modification

The main page contains a link called Modify existing forms / view results. Following this link, you will see a list of all forms in the system. The form creation page also contains a shortcut to this list.

To modify a form, select it by the radio button next to it; then, write the form password into the Form password field. Last, click Edit form.

You should get to the form editing screen. If you see something like The given password does not match form password, click back and re-enter your password.

Using the form editing screen

On the editing screen, you should see the form title, followed by data about items in the questionnaire, followed by links to make new items to the questionnaire. If the form is newly created, the item list is, of course, empty. If there are questions, the number, name, question text and answer type of each question is displayed.

To the far right of every question there is a link named del. Clicking on this link will remove the question without confirmation. Most of the time you only want to make new questions, not remove existing ones. Modifying existing questions might be a future feature.

Questionnaire item types

Labels

These are shown as a simple paragraph in the midst of the questionnaire. They can be used to give additive information on, for example, how to answer a group of questions. Technically, they're questions that cannot be answered.

Textual questions

These have a text field next to them, where replyers can write whatever they want to. No summary information is made from write-in questions, so if you need e.g. the sum of the replies, consider using multiple choice questions.

Multiple choice questions

These consist of arbitrary number of choices, each having a radio button next to it. The system will count automatically for each choice its answer count and percentage, and the sum and average of the numerical values of the choices of every multiple choice question. For an explanation of how the numerical values are determined, see 03_Results.

The parts of the question creation screen

The first thing asked on the question creation screen is the question name. Question names are mainly used in result listing, so they need not be explanatory, just descriptive.

The second thing is question text. This text should contain the bulk of the question, as well as possibly directions on answering the question and other necessary clarification to help end users answer the question correctly.

For multiple choice questions, a field asking for answer choices will be displayed. Enter the choices there in the desired order, each followed by a newline (enter, carriage return). Empty lines aren't counted, so if you want an empty choice, put something like a dash (-) there.

Last but not least, there is a field asking for question number. This field is already filled in with the next available question number; but if you want the question to be inserted somewhere in the middle of the form instead of having it appended, you should change the number to wherever you would like to put the question. Question numbers will be incremented so that the question will not have the same number as any other question.

When you have specified all necessary information, click the Add button. The question will be added and you can go again to the form editing screen, which should contain data about the question you just added.

Quitting form edition

When you are done editing, just follow the Return to main page link.