No Answer
To define a No Answer response in a categorical response list, place the following line in the question’s response list in the metadata section of the interview script:
ResponseName "ResponseText" na
For example:
MaritalStatus "What is your marital status?" categorical [1..1]
{ Single,
Married "Married/Living with partner",
Divorced "Separated/Divorced",
Widowed
MaritalStatusNA "Would rather not say" na
};
Respondents may choose any of the listed marital statuses or may choose Would rather not say.
To allow No Answer as a response to a numeric, text, or date question, define the question as follows:
Qname "Text" Type [Size] codes (
{
ResponseName "ResponseText" na
}
);
For example:
OtherConsiderations "And is there anything else that is important to you when choosing somewhere to eat?" text codes (
{
NoOtherConsiderations "Nothing else" na
}
);
When the interviewing program reaches this question, it displays a text input box with a No answer check box below it. Respondents may answer the question by either typing text in the input box or selecting the check box.
mrScriptMetadata accepts a dash or hyphen (–) as the response name for special responses, and will generate a response whose name matches the special response keyword (“na” in this instance). Although this is acceptable scriptwriting, we recommend that you choose unique names for all categorical responses, including special responses.
If you need to test for No answer responses in the routing section of the script, use
Qname.Response.Coded as described in
Checking for special responses to non-categorical questions.
See also