CHAPTER 8

Using The Internet Survey Respondent

Selecting Answers using the Survey Respondent Program

1. Single Choice, Multiple Choice, Numeric Rating, Ranking and Dual Scale

These question types are answered by selecting from a fixed set of choices. The answers work like toggles. Select it once to choose it, select it again to reset it. For these questions, answers are preceded by a gray square button labeled with a number or a letter, select the answer by:

1. Click on the gray button preceding the answer

2. Scroll Bar for Relative Impression

Another answer input type is a scroll bar. Slide the scroll bar indicator to a position between the extreme rating labels to indicate your choice. This is a relative type indicator which allows you to express your answer by the position of the scroll bar indicator.

3. Text Boxes for typed in answers (Verbatim/Open Ended)

Text boxes require a typed response using a keyboard. Select the text box by positioning the cursor on it and clicking the mouse or use the tab key until the text box receives focus.

Customizing Respondents Screens

Customizing The Survey Respondent's Opening Screen

The opening screen can be changed to display any GIF or JPEG graphic file.

The optimal dimensions for this file are 800 x 500 pixel.
(Version 1.0 and 2.0 optimal dimensions are 636 x 400)

To customize the Survey Respondent opening screen:

1. See the Internet Survey Creator - Chapter 6
   Making the Survey available on the Internet

Associating Images/Audio With A Question

If you need to create audio clips for the Java applet to play, there is an excellent shareware program called GoldWave. We have used it to create new clips and convert existing audio files to the au format. The software can be downloaded and purchased at the following web site:

http://www.goldwave.com (it costs a nominal amount - around $30 US.)

The Survey Said Internet Respondent also supports Audio and Image media per question. The parameters are defined with the multimedia tag. Note the multimedia tag starts at multimedia1 and continues sequentially up to however many audio and images need to be defined. After the multimedia tag comes a space followed by the keyword value="". Within double quotes is a: question number space image or audio keyword space Fully qualified URL to audio/image

<param name=multimedia1 value="1 image http://surveysaid.com/java/features.gif">
<param name=multimedia2 value="3 audio http://surveysaid.com/java/aviation.au">
<param name=multimedia3 value="3 image http://surveysaid.com/java/aviation.gif">
<param name=multimedia4 value="19 audio http://surveysaid.com/java/music.au">
<param name=multimedia5 value="19 image http://surveysaid.com/java/ssglobal.gif">
<param name=multimedia6 value="20 audio http://surveysaid.com/java/closings.au">
<param name=multimedia7 value="20 image http://surveysaid.com/java/closings.gif">

Miscellaneous - But Important - Multiple Submissions

UPPERCASE and lowercase

Most WEB servers are case sensitive when processing the file names and URLs. If you are experiencing problems accessing a URL or a file, check whether you are consistent in your case usage.

Customizing The Return Message

This is very easy using the cgi script supplied with Survey Said. There is no programming involved. Simply create a HTML page that is to be returned to the respondent. The message the respondent gets after answering the survey varies depending on what the ssweb program finds in the appropriate directories.

1. If the ssweb program detects a survey specific message, it will return the contents to the respondent. This method allows a survey to issue a message to the respondent specific to the survey just completed. To implement a survey specific message, create an HTML page with the same name as the survey and give it a .msg file extension (instead of .htm or .html). For this example, create a auto.msg file and put it in the same directory that the auto.pos file is in. The auto.htm that appears in the typical HTML web page directory contains the actual survey form. This is the one the respondent will answer. The auto.msg file appears in the scripts directory or a sub directory of scripts, whichever directory is chosen it must contain both the auto.pos and the auto.msg file that is to be sent back to the respondent. Important: Because the .msg returned HTML message file resides in the scripts directory (or some other directory which is not a child of the www public root), you MUST SPECIFY the FULLY QUALIFIED URL for any images, audio etc. links contained in the returned HTML page because relative addressing is lost.

2. If the ssweb program does not find or cannot read a survey specific message file as described, it will look for a global survey message file. This file must reside in the same directory as the ssweb script file, not in a sub directory. The file name must be global.msg in order for the ssweb program to detect it. The file, if detected, will be used as the default message for all surveys that use the ssweb program (assuming it did not find a survey specific message).

3. If neither a specific survey message file nor a global survey message file is detected or successfully read, then the ssweb program will send the respondent a default message.

4. Starting with version 2 of the Internet Survey Machine, it is now possible to upload the global.msg or surveyspecific.msg file using the ISM-Client program. This process is for the HTML survey administration method. Java surveys use a custom GIF or JPG image file that is specified when creating the Java survey load page in the Survey Creator applet. To upload a custom message:

• Run the ISM-Client program
• Select File - Upload to Web
• Login to your Admin profile
• Browse or enter msg filename
• Click on the Up Load button