Most of your work with MacSurvey involves working with survey definitions. A survey definition stores information about your questionnaire and controls the entry of response data. You can create as many survey definitions as you want, but MacSurvey works with only one definition at a time.
When you use MacSurvey for the first time, no survey definitions exist. By selecting Define New Survey from the Survey menu (or by pressing ‚åò-D), you can create a survey definition.
You define a new survey by creating a filename, choosing a folder to hold the definition, and answering questions about the questionnaire.
The survey definition’s filename must follow Macintosh file naming rules except that it cannot contain more than 30 characters. The definition’s filename is used by MacSurvey as a naming template for other control files linked to the definition, therefore MacSurvey must always have available the maximum length possible for filenames which is 31 characters. If after a definition is created you later change the definition’s filename, the definition will be rendered unusable. See the help item titled MacSurvey Files to see how a definition’s filename is related to other files created by MacSurvey.
After creating a name for the definition you will be prompted for the number of questions on the questionnaire and the number of response choices for each one of the questions. The questionnaire used for the survey must contain at least two questions and can have a maximum of 150. Each question on the survey questionnaire must have at least two response choices and can have a maximum of 10.
Based on your answers, a series of screens will then be displayed for entry of each question’s text and the text of its response choices. Each screen will contain an edit window for a question’s text and separate edit windows for each one of its response choices.
Up to 256 characters can be entered in a question’s edit window. Only the first 120 characters of the question’s text will be displayed during data entry.
After entry of a question’s text, use the Tab key or the mouse to move to the response choice edit windows. A one-line edit window is provided for each of the response choices. Up to 120 characters can be entered in each of the response choice edit windows. However, only the first 60 characters of each choice will be displayed during data entry. MacSurvey is designed to be used with only closed-end types of questions (multiple-choice, yes-no, true-false). If your questionnaire had any “fill-in-the-blank” or any open-end types of questions, then group expected responses into similar categories (no more than 10) before creating the definition. Use these anticipated responses as the basis for the text of that question’s response choices.
At any time during creation of the new survey you can stop the definition process. A dialog box will appear to confirm your request and will remind you that, if you stop, none of the definition will be saved. If you choose not to stop, you will be returned to the definition process. If you choose to stop, none of the definition will be saved and you will be returned to the menu bar.
After a definition is completed, and before questionnaire data can be entered into its database file, the definition must be activated by choosing Load Survey from the Survey menu. After a definition is loaded, the text of the questions and response choices can be edited by choosing Edit Questionnaire from the Survey menu. However, the number of questions and the number of response choices cannot be changed.
If you complete a survey definition and there is something that is not correct, other than the text of the questions or responses, you must load and delete the survey definition and then redefine the survey. Note: If you delete a survey definition after entry of any data, the data will also be deleted.
