Other Specify responses are different to all other responses in a response list because they have a selection button and an input box. The selection button belongs to the Other response whereas the input box belongs to a hidden, automatically generated question attached to the Other response. If you do not want to change the way the automatic question behaves you can ignore the fact that it exists at all, because the interviewing program will do everything that needs to be done.

If you want to change the behavior or characteristics of the automatic question you must enter its full definition as part of the specification for the Other response. For example:

Here, MoreTvOthQ is the name that you want to assign to the automatic Other Specify question, and text is the question’s type. You can specify any valid question type here, although text is the usual choice because this imposes no restrictions on what respondents can type. Any question text that you specify is appended to the main response text defined for the Other response.

The style parameter is optional and defines the appearance of the input box. If you prefer to specify layout characteristics in the routing section, use the OtherQuestion object which is a child of the Category object. Both methods are described in the following sections.