This page explains what question types SoSciSurvey offers and what to take care of when using them.
Most question types offer several options for further settings. Thus, many question types can look quite different from what is shown here.
Note: SoSciSurvey continuously adds new question types. Therefore, this overview may not be complete.
You can find an overview of all question types and templates directly within SoSciSurvey when clicking on Add question. Here you can find additional information for each question type - and some hints how to design questions that go beyond the templates.
SoSciSurvey is constantly updated. If you have ideas for question types, let the SoSciSurvey Team know.
Whether to choose a selection or a dropdown usually depends on the number of response alternatives and personal taste. You can change the question type any time.
A scale-like selection (not to be confused with a proper scale, see below) is another option for displaying a selection.
A multiple choice question allow to select multiple response alternatives.
Important: Whereas you get one variable storing the chosen option when using a selection, you get one veriable per item when using a multiple choice. Each of these variables stores whether the item was selected or not.
When using a scale (extremes labelled) you can only label the outer values. However, in contrast to a fully labelled scale it offers more design options. So, when you do not want to label the interim values, choose this type of scale. Advantages:
Technical Note: The design of the input fields is handled via CSS postioning (in contrast to “normal” scales and other question types). Thereby, the page is loaded a little faster.
In the following scale, the labels are in line and the 0 value is separated visually from the remaining scale.
In contrast to other scales, every value can be labelled when using fully labelled scales. Optionally, they can be visible or invisible - in the latter case the label is only displayed when hovering the mouse over an input field.
In case the scale does not look as you want it to, play around with the settings. For example, you can change the visual anchorage, the direction of the scale or the labels.
Here a couple of examples for the same scale with different settings
Similar to scales polarity profiles also allow different levels of differentiation.
SoSciSurvey further offers the option to randomly rotate the polarity of the options.
The text input allows participants to enter text.
Note: The input fields can be single-line or multi-line. The distinction is important, because different HTML form elements are being used. If you use a multi-line input field but set its height to display only one row, some browsers will display a tiny scrollbar. Therefore, do not set a height when using single-line input fields!
Tip: To generate an input box using the full width of the screen (without any label), do not enter any text and only set a height.
The balloon test is another type of text input. You need a picture with speech bubbles as a starting point. SoSciSurvey can add texts and input fields to this picture.
HTML does not offer a form element for rankings. SoSciSurvey version 2.0 offers a solution using JavaScript. Herein, a number of cards is displayed which can be dragged onto the ranks using the mouse.
Note: A small proportion of internet users disables JavaScript. These participants will see another design using dropdown menus.
Note: The items have to be ranked using the mouse, a ranking via the keyboard is impossible when using JavaScript. This can be a barrier for people with visual impairment. In Screenreader mode, SoSciSurvey displays the alternative design using dropdown menus.
Most notably in pschology the period between stimulus and response (reaction time, latency) is often measured as an indicator of attitudes.
Reaction time is heavily influenced by various factors (e.g. stimulus complexity, general reaction time of the participant, current concentration etc.). An online questionnaire adds further 'noise', e.g. loading time or individual ability of using a mouse. Measuring the reaction time of a normal question, e.g. of a scale, is therefore mostly meaningless, since only a marginal relevant variance remains.
SoSciSurvey offers a special assignment with response latency. The stimuli (terms, images or graphs) are displayed individually and evaluated by pressing a button. The terms are thus assigned to two or more categories (e.g. wrong/false, pleasant/unpleasant, rating of 1 to 5).
Note: A small proportion of internet users disables JavaScript. These participants will see another design, measuring response latency is therefore impossible.
Some templates offer creating commonly used questions quickly (e.g. a 5-point Likert scale), other templates are special modifications of standard question types (e.g. the puzzle design for rankings). When selecting a template after clicking Add question, SoSciSurvey creates a question using the according qeustion type and settings.
Internal variables are not displayed as a question. Internal variables simply save values in the data set. e.g a random number.
Internal variables use the PHP function put().
Sometimes you need to check whether a participant is truly a human being, since another computer could also be completing questionnaires. To distinguish between humans and computers, fully automated turing tests, called CAPTCHA, have been developed.
SoSciSurvey offers (depending on the server configuration) two different Captcha types: Google's reCAPTCHA and a simple calculation. When adding this question type to your questionnaire, a participant can only continue after successfully solving the task.
Note: Some data (especially the participant's IP address and the Captcha entry) are transfered to a Google server in the USA when using reCaptcha.
Note: The calculation allows digits as well as words and small spelling mistakes (e.g. telve instead of twelve). The calculation is not 100% safe: since the solution always lies between 1 and 12, a computer could theoretically complete every 13th questionnaire.
You may want to save a participant's email address without offsetting her anonymity. That's what this question type is for. The chapter Collect Contact Data Separately explains how it works.
Combined or matrix questions display two questions using the same items next to one another. The chapter Combined Questions explains how it works.
The chapter Positioning Input Boxes Freely explains how this is done.