Entering Questionnaires Efficiently

If you are entering a questionnaire into SoSci Survey, you should know some practical handles.

General procedures such as copying questions and sections are described in this manual: Manage Questions and use as Templates

You transfer the questionnaire from a Word document to SoSci Survey and work on a large screen? Then drag the browser window to the left side of the screen and Word to the right side. Then you will be able to copy contents much faster.

Normally, multiple choice questions have a larger number of options, and scale batteries have several items. In both cases, you can quickly insert them into the question via direct import.

When you create a new question, a multi-line input field is automatically offered under answer options or items. Once a question has been saved, you can access it via the direct import tab.

You can enter one option or item per line in the multi-line input field, for example:

Apples
Pears
Clementines
Dates
Strawberries
Figs

Hint: If bullet points are inserted from Word when item or selection lists are copied, SoSci Survey automatically removes them when saving. The same applies to spaces before or after the text.

For choice questions you can also add an open input field with three underscores (___).

Strawberries
Figs
Other: ___

The choice options or items of a question carry an identifier between 1 and 99. By default, SoSci Survey counts from 1, but you can also predefine a number by prefixing it with an = sign.

11=Apples
12=Pears
13=Clementines
30=Dates

For single choice questions, the identifier gives the answer code. For multiple choice questions and scales, the identifier determines the variable identifier.

In the tab Variables of a question you can adjust the names for the variables of a question. This is especially useful for scale batteries that map several subscales.

The name of the variable can be entered in square brackets after the item text during direct import. Here is the example of the BFI-10 according to Rammstedt and John (2007).

... am rather reserved. [Extr1]
... trust others easily, believe in the good in people. [Conf1]
... am comfortable, tend to be lazy. [Cons1]
... am relaxed, don't let stress upset me. [Neur1]
... have little artistic interest. [Open1]
... go out of myself, am sociable. [Extr2]
... tend to criticise others. [Conf2]
... do tasks thoroughly. [Cons2]
... get nervous and insecure easily. [Neur2]
... have an active imagination, I am imaginative. [Open2]

There must be a space between the item text and the name of the variable. Note that each name of a variable can only be used once in each survey project and that user-defined names of variables must not (!) use the pattern [letter-*-digit-digit] because this is reserved for the automatically created variable names. The name “EX01” is not allowed, whereas “EXTR1” is allowed. Invalid and duplicate variable names are ignored during direct import.

You can copy the response options of scales with intermediate values under verbal anchoring → direct import and paste them into another scale. Remove empty line, these will also be imported as (unlabelled) answer options.

You will find a tab Internal Code under Compile Questionnaire. All pages are represented as XML code there.

In order to duplicate a page, you can simply copy and paste the corresponding section from <page…> till </page>. You do not need to worry about the “intID” parameter and the comments <!– page 1 –>. They will be automatically updated when saving.

It is often more elegant to present the same page several times - each time with different content - than copying questionnaire pages. This procedure is described in the instructions for loopPage() and loopToPage().