HP-SEE Survey
From HP-SEE Wiki
This guide is meant to be used as a quick guide to get you started with creating survey in IPB Survey tool. It will explain how to login and create simple survey, covering several basic types of answer format. If you need a more detailed guide, please visit LimeSurvey Documentation Wiki.
Each survey consists of general description, display settings and, of course, questions. A survey requires each question to be a member of a group (and only that group). It will also describe how to preview your survey and how to publish it.
Contents |
Filling in The Survay
The list of currently active surveys can be found here.
To complete the survey, simply select it in the list and follow the onscreen instructions.
Creating New Survey
For adding new survey or modifying existent survey, you need to visit IPB Survey Admin Page.
Logging in
On the first page you have to enter your login information. Here you can select the language in which Survey Admin Tool will be displayed to you. Default language is English (used in this guide).
If you don't have an account yet, send an email to Dusan Vudragovic.
Creating New Survey
Now you arrived at the welcome page from which you can create new survey. Just click on the icon in the right part of the toolbar (as indicated on the picture below).
This click lead you to a page where you can describe your Survey. Survey description is divided in several tabs.
You will first be pointed to General tab where you can enter survey title, description, welcome and end message. Description will be displayed as a heading on every page of the survey (before every question), while welcome and end messages will be displayed on the first and the last page of the survey (respectively). You can also edit information about survey administrator (name and email address) which is set to your information by default.
In Presentation & navigation tab you can tune some settings regarding the way your survey is displayed. Here you can
- select if in one web page you want to display only one question, all the questions from one group of questions or all questions from the survey.
- select the template for your survey. Recommended is to use 'hpsee' template for all HP-SEE Surveys.
- select weather to allow user to save unfinished surveys in order to finish it at later time
- allow user to go back to previous question
- decide on the public availability of survey and survey results
After you described and tuned your survey, you need to click on the "Save survey" button in the bottom of the page.
In case you want to repeat previously conducted survey, with slight changes, or to import survey from file, go to Copy survey or Import survey tab.
Creating Survey Group
Now you can start adding your questions.
You should divide questions of your survey into groups. Questions can be grouped by the theme or you can use this groups structure to select which questions will be displayed on the same web page. It is required that each survey must have at least one question group.
Start by creating the first question group. After you clicked "Save survey" you are now directed to the page where a new toolbar appeared (Survey toolbar). On the right of Survey toolbar, you can click on "Add new group to survey" icon (as indicated in the picture below).
Now you just need to enter group title and description (optional), click "Save" button and you created your first group. Now let's add some questions.
Adding questions
A new toolbar appeared again under the Survey toolbar: the Question Group toolbar. On the right side of the toolbar you can click on the icon "Add new question to group", and you'll get a form for adding new question.
Each question has a code, which is mandatory field. One of the "coding" practice is to label first question of first group as 1.1, third question in the fifth group as 5.3 etc., but you may choose any algorithm that you prefer.
In next two fields you will describe your question:
- formulate the question in the Question field
- provide additional information for this question in the Help field
Next step is to chose and configure the type of the answer. We will describe here several basic answer types, but you should feel free to explore all options offered in the dropdown menu, or read about it in more details on LimeSurvey Manual: Question Types.
Free text
The simplest answer type would be a free text input. It comes in three flavors depending on the expected length of the answer:
- Short free text
- Long free text
- Huge free text
- Multiple short text (in case of subquestions)
Single choice questions
Single choice questions are those which provide only one possible entry type. If you have a predefined list of possible answers, and each user have to choose one, you then want your answer type to be a List. It comes in dropdown and radio flavor. If there is a possibility that the answer is not in your list, you can enable option Other which will let user input his answer in a free text field. You can allow user to make a comment or give him a chance to explain his choice by selecting List with comment as the answer type.
Multiple choice question
When you have a list of predefined answers, and user can select more than one, than you probably want to use Multiple options type. Additional type Multiple options with comments allow user to comment on each option he selected. Both type allow the Other option for user defined answer.
Array
It often happens that you have several questions with the same list of possible answers. For example, you want user to estimate his expertise in several different programming languages. List of languages would be C/C++, Pascal, Fortran, Python, Java etc. and the expertise level would go from Novice to Expert. This is the case where you will use Array type of answer. If you choose plain Array type, you can customize both list of subquestions and list of possible answers. There are several types that have predefined list of answers that are commonly used such as:
- scale from 1 to 5
- scale from 1 to 10
- Yes/No
- Increase/Same/Decrease
- Yes/No/Uncertain
Other case when you need to use array type is when you have subquestion with two parameters. For example you ask user to rate several lectures given during the course (on the scale from 1 to 5) in respect to significance, clarity and attractiveness. In this case you should use Array (Numbers) type. If instead of numerical answer you want a free text user comment on each of lecture aspects, use Array (Text) type.
Question without an answer
At some point in survey you might want to take a break, or to inform user about the forthcoming group of questions without getting any input from the user. Just select Boilerplate question type.
Commonly used answer type
In the Question type dropdown box you will also find some commonly used self-explanatory answer types, such as:
- Gender
- Yes/No
- Date
Ranking
Allows you to present your participants with a list of possible answers/options, which they may then rank in order of preference. This question type uses javascript and therefore currently may not be accessible to handicapped persons.
