mrScriptMetadata FAQs

I defined a question that has a default answer. However, if I run the interview script and don't answer the question, the message “Missing Answer(s)” is displayed.

In version 3.1 of the Interview Object Model (IOM), the default value of the interview script's MustAnswer property is True, which means that all default answers in the interview script are ignored.

(See also IInterview_MustAnswer in the MDM Object Model Reference.)

To allow a default answer to be accepted, set the MustAnswer property to False before the question is asked. Do this in the routing section of the interview script, for example:

Alternatively, you can set the value of the interview script's MustAnswer property to False so that all default answers in the interview script are accepted:

For more information about writing the routing section of an interview script, see What is an interview script?.

Unlike default answers, initial answers are not affected by the setting of the MustAnswer property and are always accepted.

[0..4] defines a minimum value of zero and a maximum value of 4, whereas [..4] does not define the minimum value. When you do not define a variable's minimum value, it defaults to the MDM's default minimum value for that variable type. For text and categorical variables, the default minimum value is zero, so [0..4] and [..4] mean the same in practice for text and categorical variables. However, for numeric variables, the default minimum value is a large negative value, so for numeric variables [..4] means that negative answers are valid, whereas [0..4] means only values in the range 0 through 4 are valid.

When you use an expression to set up a derived Boolean variable, what value does the variable have for respondents for whom the expression is not true?

When evaluating a dynamically derived Boolean variable whose expression is based on a comparison operator, the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model assigns a value of False to any cases for which the expression does not evaluate to True. This happens even when the value being compared in the case data is Null, because the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model uses the SQL-92 ANSI standard when a comparison operator is used with a Null value. For more information, see Null values. However, if you want the Boolean dynamically derived variable to return Null, you can use the IIf function. For an example, see Example 3: Creating filter variables.