Changing the presentation of a question

You can change how a question is displayed in the finished questionnaire, for example by changing the number of rows or columns to use to display responses, or changing whether grid subjects are displayed in rows or columns. The presentation options available depend on the question type.

The default presentation style is retrieved, when set, from the metadata; the default control style can be set in metadata by using the style properties.

Setting presentation options

Displaying responses in multiple rows or columns

Changing the style of responses

Changing the orientation of a grid question

Changing the size of a text box

The Presentation options display in the Properties pane.

This option is available for single and multiple response questions.

1 In the Orientation field, choose from Default, Columns, or Rows.

2 In the Number of Rows/Columns field, enter a number. If you selected rows in the Orientation field, the responses are ordered in rows, split into as many columns as necessary.

If you selected columns, the responses will be set out in this number of columns.

By default, single response questions are displayed using an option button and multiple response questions are displayed using a checkbox. You can change this so that the responses are displayed in a list box.

For single response questions, you can also choose to display responses in a list: In the Presentation list, choose from Check Box, List Box, or Dropdown Box.

This option is available for all types of grid questions. By default, subjects in grids are displayed in rows.

To display them in column, in the Display Subjects In field, choose Rows or Columns.

This option is available for text questions. You can change the size of a box to tailor it to the number of words that the respondent is likely to type. For example, if you are expecting the answer to be a single word, you can reduce the size of the box.

Enter the number of characters for the box in the Width and Height fields.

This option controls the size of the box, not the number of characters that the respondent can enter: to do that, use the Minimum and Maximum fields (see Creating text questions). The Minimum and Maximum values override the box size you specify here.

You cannot use the Width and Height fields for text variables in a loop. As a workaround, you can use the Control Style Height and Width properties in the Advanced Properties pane. The Control Style Height and Width properties are set in pixels.