Different response texts for interviews and analyses

Sometimes you'll want to use different question and/or response texts for interviews and analyses. Question and response texts in interviews tend to be longer and more explanatory so that respondents can easily choose their answers. In analyses, the amount of space that texts take up on a screen or page is often critical to the rest of the table or report, so you'll want to abbreviate them where possible. You can use contexts for this. Questionnaire files generally have two contexts: Question, which defines texts for interviewing, and Analysis, which defines texts for tables, profiles, and other reports.

If you write your interview script using UNICOM Intelligence Professional, all the metadata text is saved in the Question context (this is set by the Question keyword in the Metadata statement at the start of your script). If you want to use different texts in analyses you will have to add them to the script and flag them as being belonging to the Analysis context. If some texts exist only in the Question context, the analysis applications will use these texts, so there is no need to redefine texts that are the same in both contexts.

To define texts in the Analysis context, start by placing a line of the following form at the start of the script, just below the Metadata statement:

where ContextLabel is a name that you will use to label all analysis-only texts in the script. Since you'll need to type the name for every analysis text you define, it’s worthwhile choosing a short name that is easy to type. For example:

Then, add the analysis texts to the questions and responses that need them. Type:

immediately after the question or response text, where:

▪ContextLabel is the name you chose for labeling analysis texts. Notice the colon that separates it from the text. It’s easy to forget this, so if you get errors when you save your script, check that you haven't omitted a colon somewhere.

The following example shows a question for a blind product test. Respondents were asked to try three products which were referred to in the interview as A, B, and C. In analyses, we want to display the product names instead so we define replacement texts as follows. We also define a shorter question text that is more suited to analyses.

LikedBest "Which of the test products did you prefer overall?"
AC: "Product preferred overall" categorical [1..1]
{
A "Product A" AC: "Mamas Hot Chilli Sauce",
B "Product B" AC: "Sizzling Stir-In Sauce",
C "Product C" AC: "Hot, Hot, Hot"
};

If you are working in a multiple-language script, you can enter translations for analysis texts using Translation Utility, in the same way that you translate texts in the Question context. Just remember to select both the Question and Analysis contexts when prompted as part of the file opening procedure in Translation Utility.