Selections

Use selections if the questionee should choose between different answer options:

• In case only one answer option may be chosen, use the question type selection, horizontal selection or dropdown selection.
• In case the questionnee is allowed to choose multiple options use the multiple choice question type.

Advice: A multiple choice question type will create a variable for each answer option which will save a code whether the option was chosen (1) or not (0). A simple selection will create only one variable whose value corresponds to the chosen answer option.

Advice: A simple selection question type will accept up to 99 answer options. In case you need more options than 99, or in case you need a hierarchical selection, you should use an extended selectionl. You can transform an existing selection question to an extended selection question at any time by going to the extended tab. Be aware that an extended selection will not be able to support open text input options („Other: …“). An alternative for questions with many answer options may be a suggesting text input question type.

Except for the multiple choice question type the only difference between the different selection questions is their appearance. The question type can be changed at any time. Here is what the same question looks like as a selection, selection in 2 columns, horizontal selection and as a dropdown selection:

All selection questions have the ability to accept an open text input option („Other: …“). There are different ways to do this:

• Add three underscores („___“) at the end of the option text, e.g. write „Other: ___“.
• In the quick input for options box check the box in the „…“ column (see below).
• Click the edit symbol () in the quick input for options or go to the List of questions on the left and choose the answer option you want to add the text input to. Now you can check the box next to Show text input field for this option.

The latter page additionally allows you to deactivate, change the size of and to add text following the text input field (e.g. „I am ___ years old“).

Important: Only change the height of the text input field in case you want to create a multi-line input field. If a single line is fine for you, please leave this field empty.

Advice: Every input field inside a selection question will create a new (string) variable in the dataset that contains the answer.

Advice: In case the questionnee starts typing in the open text input field, soscisurvey will set their selection to this option. If the questionee changes this setting after they entered text, the text will not be deleted and also will be saved into the dataset.

• If you would like to ask several questions with the same answer options, use a scale (fully labeled). This question type can display different subquestions either as a matrix (Items on the left, answer options on the right) or as single questions (the item above, a horizontal selection of answer options below, repeated for every item).
• If you want to create a matrix with multiple answer options that allow for a multiple choice, use a combined question

The question type “Dropdown Selection” supports only one response per question (and eventually an open-ended response in addition). To present multiple dropdowns with the same options…

1. Create a qestion with type Scale (fully labeled)
2. For Differentiation (niveau) please specify the number of response options
3. Then please enter the response options as Verbal anchor (labeling of scale values)
4. For Composition select the option “dropdown”

Please note that this variant will not support open-ended “other” inputs for single response options.