Question types

For each question, information must be entered in the following fields:

Title, the question text;

Short title, a shorter string of text that could be used to identify a

question;

Description, any additional information regarding the question to

assist respondents;

Is mandatory, if this option is selected, respondents will not be able to

submit the questionnaire until this question is answered;

Answer type: one of six types: Matrix, Multiple Option, Numeric,

Range, Rank, or Text.

Only the title and answer type are mandatory fields that must be filled in when creating a question. The characteristics of each answer type are described below. Common to all the answer types is the Help text field that can be used to provide instructions regarding the expected format of an answer.

Matrix

This answer type presents the respondents with a table in which there are multiple questions (known in a matrix as ‘queries’) and multiple response options applicable to each question, such as ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘No information’. There are four different options for presenting the response fields in a matrix:

• Check boxes, allowing the selection of more than one response option per query;
• Radio buttons, restricting the selection to one response option per query;
• Drop down list, providing a fixed set of possible responses for each field in the matrix;
• Text field, providing a text input box for each field in the matrix.

When creating a question with a matrix answer type, information must be provided in the following fields:

• Matrix orientation, defines if the queries are displayed horizontally and the options vertically or vice versa;
• Display reply, select from one of Check Boxes, Drop Down List, Radio Buttons, and Text Field;
• Queries, text of the queries to pose to the respondents;
• Options, text of the options to cross with the queries defined;
• Drop down list options, options to be made available through the drop
• down list, in case this is the selected way to gather the respondents’ responses.

Multiple Option

This answer type provides the respondents with a fixed set of alternative responses to select from in order to answer a question. When creating a question with this answer type the following options are available:

Single selection, when this option is enabled the respondent will only be able to select one response;

Display type, specifies the way the options are displayed to the respondents. Can be either ‘Drop down list/Multi select’ or ‘Radio buttons/Check boxes’. The former two types are available if the single selection option is enabled, otherwise the latter two types are available;

“Other” field is required, if selected an extra option will be added as an alternative to the defined options. The label for this ‘other’ field can be customized.

Response options are then added in the order they should be displayed.

For each option a details field can be displayed, in case the users want to provide extra information about their selection.

Numeric

This answer type allows only numeric answers; Minimum and Maximum values can be specified.

Range

This answer type is a special case of a multiple option answer with radio buttons, in which there is a direct relation between the different response options.

An example of a range type question would be: “How many times a week do you visit this website?”; with 0, 1, 1-10 and 10-20 as possible options.

The direct relation between the different options would allow an analysis of the responses to this question to identify, for example, how many respondents visit this website less than 10 times a week.

The different response options must be entered in the correct order to allow this type of analysis.

Rank

This answer type prompts the respondents to sort a provided set of response options in their preferred order.

A limit may be applied to the number of response options that each respondent can select; the default option is -1, indicating that any number of options can be selected.

Text

This answer type is for open text responses.

The number of rows and the width of the input field can be specified.

The ORS allows for multiple input fields to be added.