Survey Questionnaire Markup Language (SQML)

The markup language used in this program is adapted from the SGML concept, however, it has been modified with respect to syntax to make it easier to input and use. SGML is a complete language for specifying mark-up codes — how they are to be interpreted, and how the codes relate to each other (Tuck, 1989). This language is also described in Hsu and Turoff (1996).

Survey Generation Language Specifications

The following are the specifications, in detail, of the markup language created for this survey system. This gives the general form of each specific markup, an example of how it would be used, and an example of the output produced by using that markup. The question types included represent the major types of questions that comprise survey questionnaires (Alreck & Steele, 1995). The advantages of this language are as follows:

• Easy to use,

• Consistent and clear format,

• Full question names supported,

• Generally consistent with HTML and SGML standards,

• Includes three components: type tag, question text, and options.