Overview:
This article will cover additional hints, tips, and tricks to help you get the most out of survey builder. It will be regularly updated as additional questions come in from users, where a topic does not require its own article, but users may benefit from the knowledge to have a better user experience.
We will keep it in alphabetical order and highlight any new additions each time we update it.
Contents:
- Hidden Questions
- HTML Basics
- Piping conditional
- Piping in text
Hidden Questions:
Step 1: To create a hidden question, select a single variable from the “+” list. Stay in the Editor and make the below changes to the question text, answer choices, and options.
Step 1a: In the question boxes enter: <p></p>
Step 1b: In the answer choices enter: <p> whatever you want to put here </p>
Step 1c: In the right-hand menu under “Automatically fill In answer” enter: sys_range c
NB: “sys_range c” must be all lowercase.
An example using age ranges:
Step 2: Next select the Logic from the left-hand menu and next to Answer Control, press the Answer control button:
Step 3: In the window that opens, delete the asterisk and enter the syntax so that it references for the question that you want to fill-in the hidden variable with. In this example, we would reference the age variable and enter something like: 1 try \Agenum.a.1=18:35 2 try \Agenum.a.1=36:99 then click save.
To explain this in more detail:
The <p></p> are “piping” instructions this means that we’re telling Survey Builder that we want to bring whatever is in between “<p>” and “</p>” in from somewhere else. In the case of the question text, we don’t need it as it’s a hidden variable. In the case of the answer choices we need specific age ranges counted in each of the two rows in the hidden question.
In “Automatically fill In answer” we entered “sys_range c” as this is telling Survey Builder to refer to what we’ve told it in “advanced answer control”
In advanced answer control we entered “1 try \Agenum.a.1=18:35 2 try \Agenum.a.1=36:99” to tell Survey Builder how many answer choices there are and what and where we want to put each entry in from the open-ended age numeric question.
Within this, “1 try \” is giving Survey Builder a destination for the information you want to pull-in. In this case, we want it to go in the first row. For “2 try \” we want those responses counted in the second row.
“Agenum.a.1” is the variable that we want to take from along with the question in the container “a” and the answer choice “1” as it’s an open numeric box. Note that a container can have more than one question in it, so if there were three questions in a container and you wanted to reference the third question in the container, you’d enter “c” instead of "a”.
Finally, “=18:35” is what qualifies for row 1 so that we’re telling Survey Builder that we want anyone who says they’re age 18-35 in question “Agenum” to go into row 1 in our hidden question.
Step 4: When you go back into editor, you will see this set-up for your hidden question:
Step 5 (optional): if you then wanted to create a variable that combined Age, Gender, and Region, you could create something like the below where all questions and answer choices are accounted for that we might want to have in our interlocked quota e.g. genders, ages, and regions giving us a total of 8 answer choices:
In Logic > Advanced answer control, I entered:
1 try \Gender.a=1&\AgeH.a=1&\Region.a=1 2 try \Gender.a=1&\AgeH.a=1&\Region.a=2 3 try \Gender.a=1&\AgeH.a=2&\Region.a=1 4 try \Gender.a=1&\AgeH.a=2&\Region.a=2 5 try \Gender.a=2&\AgeH.a=1&\Region.a=1 6 try \Gender.a=2&\AgeH.a=1&\Region.a=2 7 try \Gender.a=2&\AgeH.a=2&\Region.a=1 8 try \Gender.a=2&\AgeH.a=2&\Region.a=2
As a final tip on hidden questions, to see your hidden question in action and to make sure it’s coding how you want it to when testing your survey, use “sys_range e” then change the “e” to a “c” when you are satisfied that it works how you want it to.
HTML Basics:
It can be useful to know some basic HTML shortcuts when writing surveys, the following will help with simple things such as setting font preferences like bold, italics, and underline:
To put text in bold: <b>word or phrase</b>
To put text in italics: <i>word or phrase</i>
To underline text: <u>word or phrase</u>
Piping conditional:
Question text and answer text can have multiple text elements. Each text element can be filtered like in the example below. Using the filter builder you can build your filter
Piping in text:
Syntax: {{\Q1.a}}
“\Label1” is the name of the question/variable you want to draw from.
“a” is the name of the question within the container. Note that a container can have more than one question in it, so if there were three questions in a container and you wanted to reference the third question in the container, you’d enter “c” instead of "a”.
Using the WYSIWYG editor, place your cursor where you want the reference inserted and click on the Reference icon. This would bring a list of questions you can choose from.
