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Free Response

Free Response

Often, the need arises to allow the respondent to provide more information than just a single response (as in multiple choice or Likert/Semantic Differential), and instead allows the respondent to enter lines or paragraphs of text.

This allows for a response question similar to the following: What are your feelings about world peace ?

General Format

Each free response item or group of response items must have the following general markup:


<free response>

<text [text of the question]> </free response>

When this markup is executed, it will display the question, together with an editing screen that allows the user to create a free-form text response to the question. The user enters the data into the editing screen much like he or she would when using a text or line editor. This text is saved as a response to the question. The following is an explanation of the tags:

<free response> is the keyword tag for the question type. <text [text]> is the question text for the free response. </free response>

closes

the free response markup tag.

Example

<free response> <text What are your feelings about world peace?> </free response>

Likert Scale

Frequently, the need arises to express various levels of agreement or disagreement with a statement or idea. This is where the Likert scale is appropriate. For instance, someone could agree, disagree, be neutral, or strongly disagree or disagree with a statement.

The markup set up for this system allows for both the nominal (such as Strongly Agree...Strongly Disagree), and the interval scale type questions (with numbering 1 to 7 and the anchor points Strongly Agree...Strongly Disagree). This markup allows for complete flexibility in that the question designer can enter any kind of scale descriptors, as well as how many choices for the interval scale and specifying the anchor points.

The respondent is given choices on a scale, using English descriptors. A commonly used set of descriptors is the following: Strongly Agree (SA)/Agree (A)/ Neutral (N)/ Disagree (D)/ Strongly Disagree (SD). The scales and questions are set up to suit the particular survey being created.

General Format


<likert>

//required function

name

<[nominal/interval]> //type

specifier

< text [text of the question] > //question text <endpoints /endpoint1/endpoint2> <list /choice1/choice2/choice3/choice4 -----> </likert>

There are several basic elements to the Likert question markup:

<likert> is the required function name, which specifies what type of question it is.

There is also <[nominal/interval]>. This specifies the type of question that will be produced. This includes both the nominal and interval types of questions. The nominal type will allow selected choices to be chosen , while interval will allow intermediate values to be selected. For instance, nominal will allow you to select SA, A, N, D, SD, while interval allows one to make a selection between SA and A.

<text [text of the question] >. This is the text of the Likert question.

<endpoints /e1/e2> will specify the particular endpoints which will be placed on each end of the scale. Typical choices might be "Strongly Agree" on one end and "Strongly Disagree" on the other.

<list /c1 /c2 /c3 > allows you to specify the individual choices which you are allowed to make in regards to the Likert question.

</likert> closes the markup.

Example

<likert> <interval> <text Winter is my favorite

season

. SA=Strongly Agree, A=Agree, N=Neutral, D=Disagree, SD=Strongly Disagree> <endpoints /strongly agree /strongly disagree> <list /SA/A/N/D/SD> </likert>

This will produce an output similar to the following:

Winter is my favorite season. SA=Strongly Agree, A=Agree, N=Neutral, D=Disagree, SD=Strongly Disagree : SA : A : N : D : SD : Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree