Inhaltsverzeichnis

Selections

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

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.

Question types

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:

Selection

Selection (with setting „multiple columns“)

horizontal selection

dropdown selection

Open text input

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

quick input for options

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.

Matrix questions

Multiple Uniform Dropdowns

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.