Options

The following options are provided for multiple choice questions

• Required: specifies if an answer is required for the question. If the option is set, respondents will not be able to move to the next page in the survey until they answer to the question.
• Sort answers: specifies that the answers for the question should be presented to respondent sorted in ascending case insensitive alphabetical order. This option and option "Randomize answers" are mutually exclusive (i.e., they cannot both be selected).
• Randomize answers: specifies in the order in which the answers are shown for the question. The order is either fixed or randomized when respondent access the page with the question.
• Show selection instructions to respondents. When the maximum number of options that can be chosen is greater than 1 and the option is checked, a message "Select from x to y options" will be displayed to respondents, where x is the minimum number of answers that can be selected and y is the maximum number of answers that can be selected.
• Minimum number of selected answers: the minimum number of answers that must be selected if the respondents answers the question.
• Maximum number of selected answers: the maximum number of answers that can be selected if the respondents answers the question.

Predefined answers

Provides common sets of predefined choices. When an value is selected in the drop down list, the choices corresponding choices are populated in the Answers table (see below). Predefined answers are available for the languages supported in the user interface. For other language, Answers available for the question can be defined directly in the Answers table.

Obtain answers from a database

To import answers from an external relational database, select option Obtain answers from a database. They will not be synchronized in real time when respondents take the survey. Answers will be copied to the database for NoviSurvey at the time of import. Synchronization of the Answers in NoviSurvey with new or modified data in the external database necessitates running the import again.

The following options are available to synchronize the answers for the question with the data in the external database:

• Add new records: determines if data in the external database but not defined already for the question will be added to the question as answers
• Update changed records: determines if changes in data in the external database are reflected in the answers. For example, consider answer "Maybe" with was imported from a database. After the import the record in the database was changed to "Possibly". If option Update changed records is set, the answer "Maybe" will be changed to "Possibly" when the data is fetched from the external database.
• Remove non-existent records: determines deletion of data in the external database is reflected in the answers. If the option is selected, answers that were once imported from the external database but not longer exist in the database will be deleted when the data is fetched from the external database.

Determination of updates and deletion of records in the external database relies on the key field retrieved for each record in the fetch (see discussion of SQL field below).

The database type field specifies the type of the external database. Supported database types include SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, and mySQL. For support of other types of database, contact NoviSystems support.

The connection string to the database specified how NoviSurvey should connect to the database and which credentials to use. The connection string syntax is specific to the type of the database. For databases other than mySQl, specify a Provider in the connection string.

For connecting Microsoft database products, use OLE DB Provider SQLOLEDB (Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source= ...).

For connecting to Oracle, use OLE DB Provider OraOLEDB.Oracle (Provider=OraOLEDB.Oracle; Data Source= ...).

For connecting to mySQL, use a connection string formatted as: Server=myServer;Database=myDataBase;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;

Field SQL for fetching data from the database specifies the query used to retrieve the data from the external database. The SQL select must contain a column aliased as answerKey and one column for each language for the survey aliased as anwerValue_{language} where {language} is a language code stripped of any '-' character (e.g., anwerValue_enUS). If there is only one language for the survey, the language code is optional.

Example of SQL for fetching answers from a database:

select x.ID answerKey, x.Name1 answerValue_enUS, x.Name2 answerValue_frFR from ControlledVocab x

Answers

The answers table defines the answers available for the question. Each answer must be defined for each language for the survey.

To reorder the answers, use arrows and . The order of the columns is meaningful only when option Randomize answers is not set.

To add a new answer, use button

To remove an answer use button . Answers that are referenced by page conditions or report filters cannot be deleted until the conditions or filters are deleted.

To specify that an answer should be selected by default when the respondent reaches the page with the question, select the Default check box for the answer.

The number of responses already gathered for each of the answers is shown in column "# Responses".

To include an answer "Other", select the Include 'Other answer' option. The text for the answer must be defined in field Label for 'Other' answer. To provide a free text field to respondent when they select the 'Other' answer, select option "Show free text entry widget". The free text field can be either a single line text field or a multi-line text field. To required entry of some text in the free text field corresponding to the 'Other' option, select option "Require free text entry".

Display type

Specifies how the answers should be presented to respondents. The options available are:

• Drop down: The answers will be shown in a drop down list. This option is available only if fields "Minimum number of selected answers" and "Maximum number of selected answers" are set to 1.
• Radio buttons, horizontal: The answers will be shown as radio buttons, arranged horizontally in the page. This option is available only if fields "Minimum number of selected answers" and "Maximum number of selected answers" are set to 1.
• Radio buttons, vertical: The answers will be shown as radio button, arranged vertically in the page. This option is available only if fields "Minimum number of selected answers" and "Maximum number of selected answers" are set to 1.
• Check boxes, horizontal: The answers will be shown as check boxes, arranged horizontally in the page.
• Check boxes, vertical: The answers will be shown as check boxes, arranged vertically in the page.

For any options other than "Drop down", it is possible to specify the number of columns or rows used to arrange the radio buttons or check boxes. For horizontal layouts, the number of columns can be specified. For vertical layouts, the number of rows can be specified. If the number of column (or rows) is not set, the radio buttons or check boxes will be arranged in one row or one column.

Option show border determines if a border is drawn around each option in the question. If the border is shown, the color border is the same as the matrix border color for the template associated to the survey.