IN THIS ISSUE:

SurveyWriter Takes its Show on the Road this Fall 
SurveyWriter exhibited for the first time at the recent AMA national conference held in Boston, Massachusetts from Sep 25-27. more

How to Balance Your Quota Groups Without Terminating Respondents
Often, you may define your quota groups based on a multiple selection checkbox question. Since the respondent can select more than one answer option, you do not want to fill more than one quota group at a time.  more

New HTML Help Files Available
Currently, some respondents are having trouble opening up help files in SurveyWriter. This problem is caused by Microsoft Security Update 896358, which prevents respondents from opening help topics from within the web application.  more

Support Shorts
Anchoring Question In Merge Page
Use Grid Row Question to Create Fill-In Question Type
HTML Editor Shortcut Keys more

| Past Issues | |

SurveyWriter Takes Its Show on the Road this Fall 

SurveyWriter exhibited for the first time at the recent AMA national conference held in Boston, Massachusetts from Sep 25-27. Joel Friedman, CEO, and Joe Williams V.P. Media Business Development represented SurveyWriter to over 70 exhibitors and more than 750 attendees.

Joel Friedman (left) and Joe Williams (right) 
at AMA National Conference

SurveyWriter conducted over 70 demos, debuting several new features including a custom feature (not yet available as a menu item from the application) that allows pictures to be divided into sections with the respondent able to click on individual sections leaving colored overlays on the sections they like or dislike. 

We want to thank all of our existing clients who stopped by to say hello at the conference and welcome the new ones who signed up after visiting us at AMA. 

We will be exhibiting at the MRA Conference in Las Vegas, November 1-3 and at The Market Research Event in San Francisco November 6-10, where Joel will be speaking on Nov 9th as well. His speech is titled “Adapting web survey technology for the 21st century respondent”. 

If you are attending either of these events, please stop by our booth.

How to Balance Your Quota Groups Without Terminating Respondents

Often, you may define your quota groups based on a multiple selection checkbox question. Since the respondent can select more than one answer option, you do not want to fill more than one quota group at a time. You want to balance the quota groups so that if a respondent selects more than one option, only one quota group gets randomly credited. This way, the quota groups will fill evenly. Finally, if one quota group is closed, you don't want to terminate a respondent if additional qualifying groups are open.

This article explains how to use Formula questions along with quota controls to balance your quota groups and handle the situations described above.

Create parent question

To begin, set up your initial multiple selection question. 

Set up your quotas

For this example, we are only looking for 100 completes in each quota group. However, we set our quota groups to 500. This is an arbitrary number and set up simply as a counter. We will use a couple of Formula questions to actually set the quota limits.

Set up Equation Multiple Value Formula Question

1. Create a new Equation Multiple Values Formula question.
2. Click Build Filter.
3. Base the filter off the quota. To do so, change to Select Quota Control.

4. Build a filter statement for each quota so that the filter evaluates to true only if the quota numbers are less than 101 as we want to limit each quota group to 100.

Your Equation Multiple Value question should look as follows when you are finished:

5. Using Set Answer Options > Build Answer Options, copy the answer the options from Q1 into the formula question.

6. Save the Equation Multiple Values question.

Set up Sort Formula Question

1. Use a Sort formula question to pull in the values generated by the Equation Multiple Values question and return one random answer. This is the answer that will be counted by the quota groups.

Your Sort formula question should looks as follows. The variable insert, |F1*1|, is used to pull in the label associated with the first code for the Equation Multiple Value question.

2. Copy the codes and labels for the formula question from Q1.

Set up termination question

Once you have filled all your quota groups, you must have a way to terminate the remaining respondents. To do so, set up a Boolean Value Formula question that checks the previous Sort question to see if any quota groups are still open. A Boolean Value Formula question returns a 1 if the quota groups are full, 0 if at least one quota group is still open. Name the Boolean Formula question Fterm.

Set termination quota

Set up a quota based on the Boolean Value Formula question. This quota ensures that no additional respondents can complete the survey once the quota groups are filled.

New HTML Help Files Available

Currently, some respondents are having trouble opening up help files in SurveyWriter. This problem is caused by Microsoft Security Update 896358, which prevents respondents from opening help topics from within the web application. To address this situation, we've updated the help and used a different format to compile it. 

The updated online reference manual is available at: 

http://www.surveywriter.com/in/help/surveywriter.htm  

The question design guide is available at:

http://www.surveywriter.com/in/qguide/questiondesignguide.htm 

The manuals will be linked inside the application very soon.

The new reference manual contains expanded information on topics such as fetch files, security, variable inserts, and much more.

Support Shorts 

Anchoring Question In Random Question Merge Page 

SurveyWriter is previewing a new feature for its Merge Questions, which allows you to anchor one question in any position on the merge page when randomizing the questions on that page. This feature will be added to the menu soon, but is available now by naming the question to stay in the same spot "ANCHOR."  

Use Grid Row Question to Create Fill-In Question Type

If you need a fill-in numeric question that is displayed as part of a sentence, you can use a Grid Row question to create it.  To create a question like this, make sure to turn off gridlines for the question. Additionally, insert the initial text of the question in the first row. Use a double colon :: in the column heading. Create the last part of the question through Modify Options >  Text to Append to Text Box.  Adjust the spacing of the question through Set Answer Options > Format Answer Options.

HTML Editor Shortcut Keys 

The HTML Question Editor has many of the same shortcut keys as other Windows-based applications. Below is a summary of those shortcuts:

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Thank you for your continued support of SurveyWriter. If you have any topics that you would like see addressed in future editions, please email me.

Sincerely,


Vice President, Business Development
773-281-8490 / prv@surveywriter.com