The syntax file

The first stage in designing a new questionnaire is to enter the questions and the answer options into a specially formatted comma separated value file. As mentioned in the introduction, the data in the file are actually separated by semicolons (;). This means that the source file cannot contain any semicolons! If it does, the survey will not work properly and you may possibly have errors during conversion. Note that you can add semicolons in your web editor once the basic questionnaire is finished. When you create an new project in OSuCre, an empty csv source file will be created and opened. You can start entering data once the source file has been created!

An empty source file would look like this:

syntax for osucre 7.4		this file structure (csv) should remain intact for OSuCre to work
	enter name						include page numbers? [y/n]
	enter projectname						use hard prompts? [y/n]
	enter username						include a banner [y/n]
	enter password						include progress indicator [y/n]
Intro:
QUESTION	TYPE	SIZE	DIRECTION	CONTROL	LABEL 1	LABEL 2	LABEL 3	LABEL 4	LABEL 5

We will discuss the input needed for each field:

Part I

Before you start entering questions, we need some other parameters such as your name. If you enter your name, it will be added to the last page of the survey where we thank respondents for participating. Your name should be added on the left side of the "enter your name" cell.

The second field is your project name. Your project name will appear in the title of the browser window and on top of every page.

The third field is your username. This is the name you got from the server administrator. It is essential for the survey to function, as well as the password that was provided to you.

IMPORTANT! If you are using the survey.osucre.be hosting service, enter osucrehost as your username. You can leave the password field blank.

There are several other options that can be selected by placing a "y" in the column before the respective option.
1. Include page numbers: if you want each page to start with the page number. E.g. "Page 5/7".
2. Use hard prompts: use with care: respondents will be prompted to give an answer to each question for which the control option was activated.
3. Include a banner: this adds a banner (by default the VUB banner) to the survey. You can change the default banner in the options menu.
4. Include progress indicator: this option will add a progress indicator to the top left of the survey. Don't use this option in combination with $branch or $random.

Part II

Let's have a look at the questions now. First take a look at the last line of the table on this page. The labels in these cells already give you a good idea of what you need to enter.

QUESTION

The first column contains the questions. Each question is put into a table in your web from. However, if you use different input types (e.g. text and radio buttons) the lay-out will probably not be as it should be. When you leave a question cell blank, a new table will be created and thus formatting will be adjusted.

IMPORTANT: You can start a new page by entering $newpage in the question field. Data are submitted to the database on a page per page basis. If subjects quit the survey after submitting one page, your database will contain the data of this first page. This is specifically helpful when doing research on the topic of nonresponse.

Never add a $newpage at the end of an source file!

Numbering questions

When the control option is checked in the source file, OSuCre needs a way to point to which question needs to be answered. This is done by assigning a number to each question. Since you do not need to number questions, OSuCre cannot derive question numbers from the input. An alternative method is used, namely numbering the questions according to the order in the syntax file. In the example below, there are three questions entered, namely question 1, Other and question 2. According to the above logic, question 2 would be named question 3 because it is the third question entered. Since Other is a part of question 1, it does not need to be numbered. This can be done by placing an "o" in the control field for that question.

Alternatively, you can check the "use syntax as prompt" option in the extra - options menu. By doing this, the syntax will be used as the prompt text. If no syntax is present, the question text itself will be used as prompt.

HINT: If you want to use a forced choice (radio buttons) question and the list is not limitative, add a second "text" question with "other" as the content of the question. If you number the questions and you intend to use the control option (see further), make sure you add an "o" to the control cell. This will skip numbering of this question for the control function.

QUESTION	TYPE	SIZE	DIRECTION	CONTROL	LABEL 1	LABEL 2	LABEL 3	LABEL 4
1. Question 1	radio	4	v	y	option1	option2	option3	option4
Other	text	30		o

2. Question 2	checkbox	5	v

Would generate:

1. Question 1	option1
	option2
	option3
	option4
Other

TYPE

Here you need to enter the answer type. You have the choice between hidden, drop, radio, checkbox, text, textarea and VAS. If you choose a non existent type, OSuCre will show an error message with an approximate line number. Not entering a question type will result in text without any input type. You can use this to add instructions or comments to the survey.

SIZE

Depending on the TYPE, size has a different meaning:

drop: no meaning

radio: the number of radio buttons

checkbox: the number of checkboxes

text: the length of the text field

textarea: the height of the textarea

VAS: the number of pixels a visual analog scale is wide

If no size is entered when one is required by the input type, OSuCre will generate an error message.

When entering size without a question and with optional labels, a row or a table will be created containing the entered size number plus one cells. This can be helpful when you want to add scale labels on top of a table or between rows.

DIRECTION

Here you can enter whether you want radio buttons or check boxes to be placed horizontally or vertically. The default setting (if you don't enter anything) is horizontal. In these cells you can put either "v" for vertical or "h" for horizontal. Anything other than this will result in an error.

CONTROL

In the control field you need to enter if you want to check, before submission of a page, if the question has been filled in. You can enter "y" for yes or "n" for no. By default the questions are not checked. The default method used is called a soft prompt. This means that the respondent will only be reminded once that they skipped a question. If the hard prompt option was checked, respondents will not be able to continue to the next page until the question has been answered. Research has pointed out that this method can produce dropout, so use this scarcely.

IMPORTANT: A window will appear to tell the respondent which questions to complete. OSuCre assumes that every question is numbered. If you don't want a question to be numbered (for example the "other" option would be part of the same question), put an "o" in the control cell.

Also, the script that checks for incomplete items is located at the end of every newn.php page. Look for these lines:

*fieldRequired: This should contain the questions to be checked (i1, i2, …, in).

*fieldDescription: Here you have to place the respective question. By default it should contain (question 1, question 2, …, question n), however you could change it to the question content itself or part of it.

By default a screen appears with: "Please complete the following questions:       -question 1
                                                                                                                -question 2..."
             LABELX

Where X stands for a positive number.

Labels are optional and can be added to drop, radio or checkbox. Note that labels can be added in your web editor as well. However they can be very helpful when defining branches (see "branching").

Only the number of labels defined by "size" will be taken into account. The other labels that may be entered by accident will not be processed. On the other hand, not all labels need to be defined either. You could for example choose to define only end anchors, ...

When using the "drop" input type, a drop down list with all entered labels will be used.

When using labels with a VAS, only the first two labels will be considered, which will be used as the two extreme anchor points.

When using the text input type, the first label will be used as text following the input field. In the example below, "years old" was placed in the first label column.

e.g.: My youngest child is years old

HINT: When presenting a matrix of questions, you may want to present labels only once, on the line preceding the first question. This can be done by entering the number of labels in the size column and entering the labels in the label columns. For the labels to appear in the SPSS syntax, you can add syntax between braces ({}) (also see consulting the database). An example is given below.

QUESTION	TYPE	SIZE	DIRECTION	CONTROL	LABEL 1	LABEL 2	LABEL 3	LABEL 4	LABEL 5
		5			fully disagree	disagree	neutral	agree	fully agree
I like driving a car	radio	5			{fully disagree}	{disagree}	{neutral}	{agree}	{fully agree}
I like driving a bicycle	radio	5			{fully disagree}	{disagree}	{neutral}	{agree}	{fully agree}

AND NEXT...

Save all your questions into the csv file. Excel may ask you to save the data into a new/other format. DO NOT do this. Leave the source file in csv format. Make sure the spreadsheet uses a semicolon as a list separator and that no questions or other input options contain semicolons.

You can use the spreadsheet's features to make the work a little easier. For example if all of your questions use the same response scale, just enter it once and copy it as many times as needed.

Most importantly: make sure all of your questions and answer options are entered. It is very difficult to add questions after the lay-out has been changed with a web editor. Make sure the basic questionnaire has everything that is needed!