Displaying information on a page

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Most questionnaires need to display text that is not part of a question or response list, such as page headings or titles, and instructions to interviewers or respondents. To do this, define the text in the metadata section of the questionnaire in the same way that you define questions and responses, and then use statements in the routing section to display the text. This has two advantages:

▪The text can be translated using SPSS translation utilities, in the same way as question and response texts.

▪You can control how and when individual texts are displayed, so texts can be reused if necessary.

Note Non-question text is not available at the analysis stage of a project.

Another feature to do with displaying information is text substitution. This enables you to display the answer to a previous question or, indeed, any variable text of your choice as part of a question or response text. Use it for displaying a respondent’s “Other specify” answer as a valid response in another response list.

This section introduces the following keywords for use in the metadata section:

Keyword	Description
info	See Defining information texts
{#variable}	See Displaying answers in question and banner texts
{@variable}	See Displaying loop control values in repeated questions

This section also describes the following properties that you can set in the routing section to help with displaying text on the page:

▪Banners for adding information texts to questions and pages during the interview. See Banners

▪Inserts for inserting text in substitution markers in question and response texts. See Programmatically inserting text into labels.

This section also explains how to:

▪change or translate the labels displayed on navigation buttons: see Labels on navigation buttons

▪choose between question names and question texts in the Goto navigation box: see Navigation buttons.