We're running several questionnaires to track and gather various data. However, some of the answers to the questions we are asking need to be modified routinely. The problem is.. it appears that if you change the answer to a question when you already have responses in your questionnaire... it also changes the answers to the responses that were already submitted. For example if one of the questions is:
Who was your instructor?
- Jack
- Steve
- Tom
And you decided to add another answer (Laura) so your answer fields were:
- Jack
- Laura
- Steve
- Tom
Anyone who already responded and had picked "Tom" for an answer, would now show up as having answered "Steve". Presumably because Tom was the third choice, and Steve now is the third choice.
Is there anyway to be able to change the answers and avoid this problem? Or any other method you might have to work around this? I know I could just use a text field for entry... but due to user inconsistency it makes it difficult to run summarys, etc...
Any thoughts?
Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Thomas Marcais -
Nombre de respostes: 5
En resposta a Thomas Marcais
Re: Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Joseph Rézeau -
Thomas
Who was your instructor? version 1
- Jack
- Steve
- Tom
Who was your instructor? version 2
- Jack
- Steve
- Tom
- Laura
Your diagnostic is correct here. I should say it is not recommended to alter your questions once respondents have started to answer a questionnaire. In fact it does not make sense to me. Are that questionnaire settings "answer many times"? Anyway, the only solution I see to your example is to simply add any new "choices" at the end of your list of choices.Anyone who already responded and had picked "Tom" for an answer, would now show up as having answered "Steve". Presumably because Tom was the third choice, and Steve now is the third choice.
Who was your instructor? version 1
- Jack
- Steve
- Tom
Who was your instructor? version 2
- Jack
- Steve
- Tom
- Laura
En resposta a Joseph Rézeau
Re: Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Thomas Marcais -
Joseph,
Thank you for your rapid reply. I was afraid that was the case. Let me explain a little about how I'm using the questionnaire. I use the questionnaire as a media equipment request form, and as a training evaluation survey. Both of these are set to "answer many times", since the same respondent may need to use each one multiple times. The media equipment request is mostly text-based, but does have check-boxes for the specific media equipment needed, as well as a check-box question for any services that need to be provided. We need to keep all the previous responses so that we can have records of what equipment is being used (and your summary feature is great for that!) In this case, since they're short lists, I think your solution of putting the new choices at the end of the list will probably work out great, and appreciate your suggestion.
As for the training evaluation... this one has many more drop-down fields, radial buttons and check-boxes. Again, we need to keep all the records for reporting. Fields that could regularly change in this questionnaire include the name of the training course, the room the training is held in, and the instructor name. Unfortunately, some of these lists are quite long (especially the drop-down for training courses)... and were previously alphabetized. Adding the choices at the end may cause some confusion and are not as ideal a solution.
I'm guessing that part of the problem is that we're basically using your questionnaire not only as a tool to collect data... but we're also trying to use it to store data... and of course, it's not intended to be a database. I'm wondering if my best option might be to export the previous responses to a text file before I make any modifications. Then, I can group and store all responses in an external spreadsheet or database. Sadly, I would lose the ease of your summary page data... but could certainly come up with my own reports. My only problem with that... is it seems that the text export is exporting numerical responses, rather than the actual choice text that was made. I know that I could do find and replaces... but it seems like a tedious amount of work. If there's a way to have the actual choice text exported, I'd be thrilled to learn about it!
Thanks again for your help... and if you have any more suggestions, please let me know!
Thank you for your rapid reply. I was afraid that was the case. Let me explain a little about how I'm using the questionnaire. I use the questionnaire as a media equipment request form, and as a training evaluation survey. Both of these are set to "answer many times", since the same respondent may need to use each one multiple times. The media equipment request is mostly text-based, but does have check-boxes for the specific media equipment needed, as well as a check-box question for any services that need to be provided. We need to keep all the previous responses so that we can have records of what equipment is being used (and your summary feature is great for that!) In this case, since they're short lists, I think your solution of putting the new choices at the end of the list will probably work out great, and appreciate your suggestion.
As for the training evaluation... this one has many more drop-down fields, radial buttons and check-boxes. Again, we need to keep all the records for reporting. Fields that could regularly change in this questionnaire include the name of the training course, the room the training is held in, and the instructor name. Unfortunately, some of these lists are quite long (especially the drop-down for training courses)... and were previously alphabetized. Adding the choices at the end may cause some confusion and are not as ideal a solution.
I'm guessing that part of the problem is that we're basically using your questionnaire not only as a tool to collect data... but we're also trying to use it to store data... and of course, it's not intended to be a database. I'm wondering if my best option might be to export the previous responses to a text file before I make any modifications. Then, I can group and store all responses in an external spreadsheet or database. Sadly, I would lose the ease of your summary page data... but could certainly come up with my own reports. My only problem with that... is it seems that the text export is exporting numerical responses, rather than the actual choice text that was made. I know that I could do find and replaces... but it seems like a tedious amount of work. If there's a way to have the actual choice text exported, I'd be thrilled to learn about it!
Thanks again for your help... and if you have any more suggestions, please let me know!
En resposta a Thomas Marcais
Re: Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Joseph Rézeau -
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for the clarification. You are certainly using the Questionnaire module for "non orthodox" uses! Are you sure the database module would not be more suitable? Anyway, to answer your last question about exporting the data, you can very well export the responses to radio buttons and check boxes as text rather than numbers. Please see the detailed online Help available next to the Question name field when you create or edit questions. Here is an extract:
etc.
Thanks for the clarification. You are certainly using the Questionnaire module for "non orthodox" uses! Are you sure the database module would not be more suitable? Anyway, to answer your last question about exporting the data, you can very well export the responses to radio buttons and check boxes as text rather than numbers. Please see the detailed online Help available next to the Question name field when you create or edit questions. Here is an extract:
Edit question - Question Name
You can optionally enter a Question Name for each question.
The Question Name is only used when you export responses to CSV/Excel format. If you never export to CSV, then you needn't worry about Question names at all. If you plan to regularly export your questionnaire data to CSV, then you have a choice of two options for question naming.
Option 1: significant names
In the Question Name box, enter meaningful, short and different question names for all of the questions within one questionnaire. In the CSV export file, all those question names will be prefixed with the question's actual number (= position) in the quiz.etc.
And, when you Download in text format, in the Options for text download (CSV), select Include choice codes OR Include choice text according to your needs. That should do what you want.
ATB
Joseph
En resposta a Joseph Rézeau
Re: Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Thomas Marcais -
Joseph,
The database module would have met a lot of our requirements... but would have fallen short on a few too. The main thing the Questionnaire gives us that the database doesn't, is email notifications when the entry is submitted. In addition, to get any type of summery data from the Database module we would have had to make a "view list" template as a CSV file and export it to an external Spreadsheet/Database (which it looks like we may end up having to do anyhow). Not to mention that the templates would have taken a lot more time to set up. So, I think the Questionnaire may actually still work best for us.
I tried to find the "Options for text download (CSV), select Include choice codes OR Include choice text" but they don't seem to exist. All I have is a button for "Download in text format". I don't have any options with it. We're running Moodle 1.8.8+ and our questionnaire shows up as version 2007010802. Do we need to upgrade? I don't want to upgrade our actual Moodle version (too many users to retrain), but could upgrade the questionnaire module if there's a newer version (and if the upgrade doesn't interfere with existing questionnaires on our system). Let me know what you think. Thanks again for your help!
The database module would have met a lot of our requirements... but would have fallen short on a few too. The main thing the Questionnaire gives us that the database doesn't, is email notifications when the entry is submitted. In addition, to get any type of summery data from the Database module we would have had to make a "view list" template as a CSV file and export it to an external Spreadsheet/Database (which it looks like we may end up having to do anyhow). Not to mention that the templates would have taken a lot more time to set up. So, I think the Questionnaire may actually still work best for us.
I tried to find the "Options for text download (CSV), select Include choice codes OR Include choice text" but they don't seem to exist. All I have is a button for "Download in text format". I don't have any options with it. We're running Moodle 1.8.8+ and our questionnaire shows up as version 2007010802. Do we need to upgrade? I don't want to upgrade our actual Moodle version (too many users to retrain), but could upgrade the questionnaire module if there's a newer version (and if the upgrade doesn't interfere with existing questionnaires on our system). Let me know what you think. Thanks again for your help!
En resposta a Thomas Marcais
Re: Is it possible to change answers in an active Questionnaire?
per Joseph Rézeau -
Oops! I presumed you were using the current version of Moodle (1.9). The newer version of Questionnaire (for use on Moodle 1.9 exclusively) is much better and offers a much more intuitive interface for creating and editing questions. I can only advise upgrading your Moodle to 1.9 as soon as it is feasible, and enjoy the improvements in Questionnaire at the same time.
Joseph
PS.- You can try out Questionnaire 1.9 on my moodle 1.9 test site, Questionnaire Demo course. Log in as teacher1, pass teacher1.