Editing Questionnaire questions

Editing questions

• On the Questionnaire Editing Questions page is displayed a drop-down list of the question types available and a list of the questions already created for the current questionnaire instance (if any).
• Using the standard Moodle icons you can change the order of the questions in the questionnaire, edit or delete questions.

Common options

Question Name

Questionnaires not using the Conditional Branching or the Personality Test features

You can optionally enter a Question Name for each question.

If your questionnaire does not use the "Conditional Branching" or the "Personality Test" feature, the Question Name is only used when you export responses to CSV/Excel format. If you never export to CSV, then you needn't worry about Question names. If you plan to regularly export your questionnaire data to CSV, then you have a choice of two options for question naming.

Option 1: significant names

In the Question Name box, enter meaningful, short and different question names for all of the questions within one questionnaire. In the CSV export file, all those question names will be prefixed with the question's actual number (= position) in the quiz. Examples:

question number (position) in the questionnaire	question name entered by teacher	field header in csv export
5	favorite colors	Q05_favorite colors
6	why_use_Moodle	Q06_why_use_moodle
7	user-friendliness (rate question with 3 possible answers: Moodle, WebCT and Blackboard)	Q07_user-friendliness->Moodle Q07_user-friendliness->WebCT Q07_user-friendliness->Blackboard

Option 2: leave the Question Name boxes blank

For each un-named question, CSV export will automatically generate a question name. This is required for table header fields in the CSV and subsequent Excel tables or any statistics package you might be using. The question name generated will be based on the question number in the actual Quiz (excluding Section Text pseudo-questions, of course) e.g. Q01, Q02, ... Q99. For questions with multiple answers, such as rate-type or Likert type questions, a sub-question number will be generated (Q02_1, Q02_2, Q02_3, etc.). This type of "short-name" naming scheme is advisable for exporting your data to a statistics software. Of course, it's up to you to have your own system for remembering which abbreviated question name corresponds to which question in your questionnaire!

question number (position) in the questionnaire	question name entered by teacher	field header in csv export
5		Q05
6		Q06
7		Q07_1 Q07_2 Q07_3

It is quite possible (but maybe not advisable) to mix the two systems, and have within one questionnaire both named and un-named questions.

Questionnaires using the Conditional Branching feature

If you need a question to be used as the "parent" of one or more subsequent questions in your questionnaire, then you must name that "parent question". Only those (radio buttons, dropdown list or yes/no) questions with a name will appear in the Parent question dropdown list when adding a new question, as shown on the following screenshots.

For more information, see Conditional branching.

Response Required

If you select Yes, response to this question will be required, i.e. the respondent will not be able to submit the questionnaire until this question has been answered. If the respondent tries to submit a questionnaire with unanswered required questions (or, in the case of a questionnaire with more than one section, to go to the next page), a warning message will be displayed with a list of all the missing required questions in the questionnaire (or on the actual page).

Default.- No.

Note.- When you create new questions in sequence (one after the other), this parameter is carried over to subsequent questions. E.g. if you create question #1 with Response Required = Yes, then the Response Required parameter will be pre-set to Yes for question #2, etc. You can of course change this parameter at any time.

In the Manage Questions section of the Questions editing page, once a question has been created, you can use the green and red dots to switch its Required state, as a shortcut alternative of editing the question.

Parent Question

See Conditional branching

Question Text

Enter your question text in this box. The HTML editor is available, which means that you can display not only formatted text but also images or other media in a questionnaire's questions text.

Question Types

Select the type of question from the drop-down list and click on the Add selected question type button.

---Page Break---

Use this to insert page breaks in longish questionnaires. Note that if a page contains questions with required response the respondent will not be allowed to navigate to the next page unless those required responses have been given.

If your questionnaire uses the Conditional branching feature, then page breaks will be automatically inserted when you add "parent" or "child" questions. Page breaks which are needed to ensure a correct "Conditional branching" flow cannot be moved or deleted. Their Move and Delete icons are disabled.

Check Boxes

Check boxes allow the user to select multiple answers from a list of options.

Question editing interface

Options

Editing Mode	Questionnaire View
Question text: What are your favorite hobbies? Possible answers: Watching TV Dancing Computing !other=Another hobby:

You may enter “!other” on a line to create an optional fill in the blank option. An!other box defaults to using the prompt Other: , (or the equivalent translation for Other in the current language being used). You may change this default prompt by using the format: “!other=prompt text” as shown in the example above.

Notes.-

1. At the moment the length of the fill in the blank input text box is set to 25 characters and is not customizable through the online interface.
2. You may provide more than one !other fill in the blank option for a Check Boxes question, but this might cause problems so it is not recommended.
3. When a respondent answers a Check Boxes question which has been created as Required, and the Min. forced responses and Max. forced responses parameters have been used, then a warning message will be displayed if respondent does not check the required number of boxes.
4. Note that, if the !other fill in the blank option has been created, then if it is checked by the respondent, it will count in the total of minimum/maximum required check boxes.
5. If a respondent checks a fill in the blank option check box and leaves the text field empty, that box will be unchecked (upon navigating to the next page or upon submitting the questionnaire).
6. If a respondent has cheked a fill in the blank option check box and has filled in the text field, and later on changes his mind and unckecks that box, the fill in the blank text field will be automatically emptied (cool, ain't it?).

Date

Use the day/month/year format, e.g. for March 14th, 1945: 14/3/1945

Use this question type if you expect the response to be a correctly formatted date. The format will depend upon the language currently being used by the questionnaire respondent. For example 4/21/2007 (US); 21/4/2007 (UK); 21-4-2007 (France); etc. An example will be displayed in the questionnaire. If an "impossible" or wrongly formatted date is entered, it will either be re-written or reformatted correctly (if possible) or an error message will be displayed to the respondent. In order for dates to be correctly exported to spreadsheets such as Excel, respondent must enter a date in the 1902 to 2037 range. If a date outside this range is expected from respondents, then use the Text Box question type instead. The date question type will accept dates consisting only of a month plus a year (e.g. 12/2008 for december 2008) or only a year (e.g. 2008). However, for spreadsheet processing compatibility, such incomplete dates will be automatically transformed to complete dd/mm/yy dates, e.g. 12/2008 -> 01/12/2008 and 2008 -> 01/01/2008. You may have to explain this pecularity to your questionnaire users beforehand.

Dropdown Box

There is no real advantage to using the Dropdown Box over using the Radio Buttons except perhaps for longish lists of options, to save screen space.

Essay Box

Question editing interface

Settings

This question will display a plain text box with x Textarea columns (or area width) and y Textarea rows (number of text lines).

If you leave both x and y to their default 0 value (or if you set it to 0), then moodle's HTML editor will be displayed with standard height and width (if available in the course/user context & user profile).

Label

This is not a question but a (short) text which will be displayed to introduce a series of questions.

Numeric

Use this question type if you expect the response to be a correctly formatted number. By using the Max. digits allowed and Nb of decimal digits parameters you can specify the length and number of decimal places required. Use Max. digits allowed to set a limit to the number of characters entered for a Numeric question. Note that the decimal point also counts as one character! Use Nb of decimal digits to specify the format of the Average value counted and displayed at the Questionnaire Report page.

Examples:

	Max. digits allowed	Nb of decimal digits	Response entered	Average displayed
Example 1	6	2	12	12.00
Example 2	6	2	12.569	12.57
Example 3	8	1	12.57898	12.6

Radio Buttons

Question editing interface

Radio buttons Alignment

Possible answers

You must fill in one answer per line in the Possible answers box.

Examples:

Editing Mode	Questionnaire View	(optional horizontal display)
1.Possible answers: Red Blue Black	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black
2.Possible answers: Red Blue Black !other	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black Other:	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black Other:
3.Possible answers: Red Blue Black !other=Another color:	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black Another color:	What is your favorite color? Red Blue Black Another color:
	Questionnaire View	Text data export
4.Possible answers: red::the color of blood blue::the color of the sky black::opposite of white	What is your favorite color? the color of blood the color of the sky opposite of white	The "values" red, blue and black will be exported to the columns instead of standard 1, 2 and 3 numbers. See Download in text format.
5.Possible answers: 0=Never 1=Once a year 3=Once a month 5=Once a week 7=Once a day	How often do you practise a sport? Never Once a year Once a month Once a week Once a day

You may enter “!other” on a line to create an optional fill in the blank option. An !other box defaults to using the prompt Other:, (or the equivalent translation for Other in the current language being used). You may change this default prompt by using the format: “!other=prompt text” as shown in Example #3 above.

Notes

1. At the moment the length of the fill in the blank input text box is set to 25 characters and is not customizable through the online interface.
2. It does not make sense to provide more than one !other fill in the blank option for a Radio Buttons question.
3. If a respondent checks a fill in the blank option radio button and leaves the text field empty, a warning message will be displayed (upon navigating to the next page or upon submitting the questionnaire).
4. If a respondent has checked a fill in the blank option radio button and has filled in the text field, and later on changes his mind and clicks a different radio button in the same question, the fill in the blank text field previously entered will be automatically emptied.
5. Example #4 shows a possible "hidden" option, for exporting - in responses - named values as data instead of standard numbers. If you never export your data for studying it in stats packages you won't need this option.
6. If you plan to use the '"Personality Test"' feature in your questionnaire, the number preceding each choice will be used to calculate the "score" of the section that includes this question. See https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/mod/questionnaire/personality_test#Questions

Rate (scale 1..5)

Example:

The Rate question now features extra "not yet answered" radio buttons. This is especially useful in Rate questions with a long list of choices.

In case the respondent forgets to check some radio buttons, upon moving to next page or submitting, the error message will be completed with highlighting of the "not yet answered" radio buttons.

Question editing interface:

Number of scale items

Nb of scale items is the number of items to be used in your rate scale. You would normally use a value of 3 to 5. Default value: 5.

Type of rate scale

• Normal (default value)
• N/A columns  : Choose this if you want an N/A column to be added to the right of your Rate scale items columns.
• No duplicate choices: Choose this if you want to prevent duplicate choices in each degree column.
  • This is useful if you want the respondent to rank a number of items on a 1 to n scale and to force each rank to be unique. Example: order items A, B and C in order of preference will accept: A1, B3 and C2 or A3, B2 and C1, but it will not be possible for the respondent to enter: A1, B1, C2 or A1, B2, C2, etc.
  • Used in conjunction with named degrees, this No duplicate choices option can also be useful if you want the respondent to match items with named degrees, e.g. the colors red, blue, yellow with a set of physiological responses: excitement, tranquillity, concentration where one color can only match one physiological response.
• Osgood: Choose this to create a question of the Osgood's semantic differential type. This parameter must be used in conjunction with named degrees.

Possible answers

Examples.

Editing Mode	Questionnaire View
Ex. 1 Rate (single line) Possible answers -> Enter a blank space or a short "label". Settings: Nb of scale items = 5 (5 columns numbered 1...5);Type of rate scale = Normal (N/A column not needed here).
Ex. 2 Rate (several lines) Possible answers. Blackboard Desire2Learn Moodle Sakai WebCT Settings: Nb of scale items = 4 (4 columns numbered 1...4) Type of rate scale = N/A column
Ex. 2a Rate ("ordering") This option makes it impossible to click more than one radio button per column; it is thus equivalent to an "ordering" question type. Settings: Nb of scale items = 3 (3 columns numbered 1...3) Type of rate scale = No duplicate choices
Ex. 3 Rate with named degrees Possible answers. 4=Very easy to use 3=Easy to use 2=Somewhat difficult to use 1=Difficult to use Formatting Your Course Laying out Your Course Number of Clicks to Access Needed Content Adding Content Ability to Add/Change Themes/Appearance Overall Navigation of Moodle Settings: Nb of scale items = 4 (4 named columns) Type of rate scale = Normal (N/A column not needed here)
Ex. 3b Rate with named degrees Possible answers. 4=Very easy to use 3=Easy to use 2=Somewhat difficult to use 1=Difficult to use formatting::Formatting Your Course layout::Laying out Your Course clicks::Number of Clicks to Access Needed Content addcontent::Adding Content appearance::Ability to Add/Change Themes/Appearance navigation::Overall Navigation of Moodle	If the choice options text is fairly long, you may use shorter "labels" immediately followed by two colons (::). The labels "formatting", "layout", "clicks" etc. will be saved to the columns headings in the Download as text format operation, instead of the longer labels which will be displayed to the questionnaire respondent. Please note that in former versions of Questionnaire the separator between "short label" and "options text" used to be the equal sign (=). In Questionnaire 2.5 and later, please use two colons (::) as a separator.
Ex. 4 Osgood's Semantic differential ' Possible answers. 1=-- 2=- 3=± 4=+ 5=++ weak|strong cold|warm cowardly|brave Settings: Nb of scale items = 5 (5 named columns) Type of rate scale = Osgood Note.- To separate the pairs of words you must use a pipe character |

Notes.- named degrees

For this question type you have two display options. The default option displays the Likert scale degrees as numbers (1...5). If you prefer to have named degrees instead of numbers, you'll have to enter those names in the Possible answers list (see Example 3 above). On each line of "possible answers" enter the degree number, immediately followed by the equal sign = immediately followed by the name you want to give to that degree.

If you plan to use the "Personality Test" feature in your questionnaire, the number preceding each named degree will be used to calculate the "score" of the section that includes this question. See https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/mod/questionnaire/personality_test#Questions_2.

If the number of named degrees in the possible answers list is different from the number determined by the value you entered in the Nb of scale items field, this will be automatically adjusted when you save the question. If you decide to use named degrees for your Likert scale, it is recommended (but not obligatory) to start your list of possible answers with the named degrees, and then to enter the various items to be scaled.

Example #3b shows a possible "hidden" option, for exporting - in responses - shorter label instead of the longer text values. If you never export your data for studying it in stats packages you won't need this option. Please note that the example is provided here for the Rate with named degrees question sub-type but it works for all Rate question sub-types except Osgood which requires short left and right options anyway.

Text Box

For the Text Box question type, enter the Input Box length and the Maximum text length of text to be entered by respondent.

Default values are 20 characters for the Input Box width and 25 characters for the maximum length of text entered.

Manage questions

In the Manage questions section of the Edit Questions page, you can conduct a number of operations on a Questionnaire's questions. Normally you should never add questions or delete questions in a questionnaire that is live in a moodle course, and which some students may have already responded to.

You can Move a question to a different position in the Questionnaire. If your questionnaire contains some "conditional branching" questions, you may not be able to move some of the parent or child questions to some positions which would ruin the branching.

You can Edit a question, but again, be extra careful when editing questions once students have started to complete a questionnaire.

If you try to Delete a child or parent question (in a Conditional branching questionnaire), you will be warned of the possible consequences of those deletions.

By clicking on the Green or Red dots, you can switch the "Response required" status of questions.

Please note that the numbers in front of each question in this interface are not the question numbers that will be displayed when answering the questionnaire. Here, these numbers indicate the question's position, and even non-real questions such as Labels and Page Breaks have a position number.

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