Questionnaire Programming
This chapters relates to the process of digitization of a questionnaire, and not to the process of developing content for Questionnaire Design.
Read First
You should never start coding your survey before you have a fairly completed
The first rule of Questionnaire Programming is to not start programming your survey before you have questionnaire already. If you do not have a questionnaire, go to Questionnaire Design
Articles often forgotten
- Questionnaire Encryption - read before creating your questionnaire
- Survey Data Quality Checks - read while you are programming your questionnaire. Best practice is to develop data quality checks in parallel to coding your the questionnaire.
- Updating a Questionnaire already in use - Important best practice when you realize that you need to make changes to a survey you have started to use in the field already.
Topics
The following topics are ordered in a more or less chronological order
Choosing Software
There are several software on the market for digital data collection. At DIME we have built up
Using the Server
You can either set up your own server, but if your project is a DIME project you can use our development server DIMEtest until your project require its own server
Create a questionnaire
The easiest way to start with one of SurveyCTO's template forms. You can either program your questionnaire in the form builder or in an Excel sheet. We recommend that your default approach is the Excel sheet. Regardless what method you use to program your questionnaire, and regardless if you start with an empty instrument or use a survey that have been used before, it is important that you encrypt your questionnaires.
How to start coding your questionnaire
Before starting the programming, read this article on form settings first.
The organization of how to approach coding a questionnaire (or perhaps the lack therefore) is in our experience the most common reason for serious bugs that should have been avoidable. questionnaire organization programming will provide you with a
Updating a questionnaire already used in the field
While SurveyCTO have fucntionality to allow edits to questionniares already in use, this is not advisable, instead