Build supports the following question types:

Build has a questionnaire library that includes some standard questionnaires that you can use or change. You can also add your own questionnaires to the library. For more information, see Using the questionnaire library.

Single and multiple response questions (also known as categorical questions) have a predefined set of answers from which choices can be made. Build provides separate options for creating single response and multiple response questions, and you must choose the one that matches the types of responses you want to allow.

You can filter the response list so that, when interviews take place, only responses that were or were not mentioned at a previous question are displayed. This is particularly useful for spontaneous and prompted awareness questions where you want to prompt only for the responses that were not mentioned spontaneously.

In a multiple response question, you can flag some of the responses as single response – for example, if there is a “None of the above” response.

If the response list contains an ‘Other’ response, respondents can also give answers that are not in the predefined list.

You can associate pictures with responses. These can be in any of the following formats: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, or bmp.

When you export categorical questions, the export process exports the question and response texts exactly as they appear in the questionnaire. Sometimes you will want to use different texts in your analyses than you used during interviewing. A typical example is question text, where you will tend to use a more wordy approach in interviewing than in analyses, saying, for example, “What is your overall opinion of the product?” rather than simply “Overall opinion”.

Categorical responses are exported as numeric codes, where codes are assigned to responses in the order they appear in the questionnaire. The first response is code 1, the second is code 2, and so on. Numbering is sequential and starts at 1 for each question.

Select the Advanced tab, and then set these properties:

Choose whether or not this question must be answered.

If a question can be left unanswered, and you do not insert a No Answer response in the category list, Build inserts one automatically. This is because the interview script that is generated from the Build questionnaire requires this in order for respondents to be able to click Next without having to select an answer. (You will not see the No Answer category until your screen is refreshed, for example, when you change tabs. At this point, Build also displays a message telling you that it has added No Answer.)

If you set this option to Yes and then edit the question later on and change this option to No, Build does not automatically remove No Answer. If you want to disallow No Answer response, you must delete it.

Choose No if the question should be displayed to the respondent. If this is a dummy question that is to exist in the questionnaire but not be displayed to respondents, choose Yes.

Typically, the responses to hidden questions are set by statements defined in IOM Script items. They provide an efficient method of merging the responses to a number of related questions into a single variable for use elsewhere in the questionnaire. For this reason, the response list for the hidden question often consists of all the responses to the questions that are to be merged.

Because they are not displayed, hidden questions are not valid in question groups.

Choose whether this is a single or multiple response question. By default, the setting for this property matches the data type of the item you selected to create this question: that is, if you chose Single Response then Single Response will be selected automatically for this property. You should only need to change this setting if you want to change the question type after the question has been defined. Changing the question type here changes the overall question type in the questionnaire and also changes all the individual response types in the response list.

Choose the order in which responses should be presented. Choose Default to present responses in the order they appear in the response list, Random to present responses in a random order, Rotated to present responses in rotation so that each response takes a turn at being first in the list, or Reversed to present responses in reverse order so that the last response in the list appears first.

Use the Display Responses boxes if you want to filter the response list based on the respondent’s answers to previous related questions.

In the first box, choose one of All Responses, Chosen, or Not Chosen.

In the second box, choose the question whose answer controls the responses to be displayed for the current question.

When prompted, confirm that the responses defined for the chosen question (the parent question) might overwrite the response list for the current question.

This facility requires that the response list to the current question remains identical to the response list for the chosen question. To achieve this, Build makes the response list for the current question read-only. Any changes that you make to the response list in the parent question appear in the response list to the current question.

In the Responses section, in the Type column, choose one of Single Response, Multiple Response, Don’t Know, No Answer, or Refuse to Answer for each response.

If a response is to be treated as a Specified Other response, click its Other check box. During interviews, respondents can select this response to give an answer that does not appear in the category list.

To define routing for a response, select the routing destination from the GoTo dropdown list for that response. (If you want to skip forwards in the questionnaire, you must define the question you want to route to before you can select it from the dropdown list.)

To associate a picture with a response, do the following:

You can add new responses to the list, delete responses, or alter the order of responses in the list using the options above the response list. For more information, see Editing response and subject lists.

Numeric questions require answers that are integer or real numbers, optionally within a specified range.

When you export numeric questions, the export process exports the question texts as they appear in the questionnaire. Sometimes, you might want to use different texts in your analyses than you used during interviewing. For example, in an interview you might ask “How old are you?”, but in tabulations, you might prefer the text “Age” or “Age of respondent”.

If you want to allow “No Answer”, “Don’t Know”, or “Refuse to Answer” as special responses to this question, do the following:

See To set export and analysis options.

Text questions accept any answer.

When you export text questions, the export process exports the question texts exactly as they appear in the questionnaire. Sometimes, you will want to use different texts in your analyses than you used during interviewing. For example, in an interview you will ask “What is your name?” but in tabulations you might prefer the text “Name” or “Name of respondent”.

Select the Advanced tab, and then see:

See To set export and analysis options.

Grid questions are an efficient way of asking the same question about a number of related topics. The question is displayed in a tabular or grid form, with the subquestions (subjects) forming one dimension of the grid and the responses forming the other. A typical example of a single/multiple response grid is a question that asks respondents to rate a number of products on a scale of Excellent to Very Poor.

Build provides separate options for creating single response and multiple response grids, but you can still change the response type of individual responses within a grid if you want.

You can filter the response list so that, when interviews take place, only responses that were or were not mentioned at a previous question are displayed. This is particularly useful for spontaneous and prompted awareness questions where you want to prompt only for the responses that were not mentioned spontaneously.

In a multiple response grid, you can flag some of the categories as single response: for example, if there is a “None of the above” category.

You can associate pictures with responses. These can be in any of the following formats: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, or bmp.

When you export grid questions, the export process exports the question and response texts exactly as they appear in the questionnaire. Sometimes, you will want to use different texts in your analysis than you used during interviewing. A typical example is question text, where you will tend to use a more wordy approach in interviewing than in analysis, saying, for example, “What is your overall opinion of the products?” rather than simply “Overall opinion”.

The variable labels for the grid subjects consist of the subject text followed by a colon and then the main question text. For instance, if the main question text is “What is your overall opinion of the products?” and the products are different brands of washing powder, the variable labels for each product would default to, say, “Washo:What is your overall opinion of the products?”, “Suds:What is your overall opinion of the products?”, and so on. These texts are unlikely to be what you want to see in your tables.

Grid questions are an efficient way of asking the same question about a number of related topics. The question is displayed in a tabular or grid form, with the subquestions (subjects) forming one dimension of the grid and the responses forming the other. A typical example of a numeric grid is a question that asks respondents how many times they consumed various types of soft drinks on different days of the week.

You can associate pictures with responses. These can be in any of the following formats: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, or bmp.

When you export numeric grid questions, the export process exports the subject and response texts exactly as they appear in the questionnaire. You can specify different texts for analyses if you want.

The following list describes the limits that apply when defining or responding to a question.

(Also known as Integer)

The minimum value is -2,147,483,648.

The maximum value is 2,147,483,647.

(Also known as Decimal or Real)

The minimum value is -1.79769313486232E308

The maximum value is 1.79769313486232E308.

The smallest negative value is -4.94065645841247E-324.

The smallest positive value is 4.94065645841247E-324.

Can in theory be up to 2 billion characters in length. In reality, the length is limited by the database being used to store the response. In a UNICOM Intelligence relational MR database, the maximum length is 4,000 characters.

The earliest value is 1 January 100 and the latest value is 31 December 9999.

Can in theory contain up to 2 billion categories. In reality, the number depends on the available memory and the Data Source Component (DSC) being used. A category name must contain between 1 and 128 characters.

A question name must contain between 1 and 128 characters.

Shared lists are a quick and efficient way of dealing with single and multiple choice responses that are common to a number of questions. A typical example might be a five-point rating scale that you want to use for rating various aspects of product. Rather than retyping the five responses for each question, or copying and pasting them from one question to another, you can set them up as a shared list with a unique name and then insert them as a block wherever they are needed.

Shared lists are shown at the end of the Overview tab under the heading Shared Lists.

Setting up shared lists is like creating a single or multiple response question. You give the list a name and enter the responses it will contain. Shared lists can contain single choice, multiple choice, no answer, don’t know, and refused to answer responses.

When you insert a shared response list in a question, bear in mind the following:

Display Text items place text or other non-question information in the questionnaire. They are often used for general instructions to the interviewer or respondent.

The Library is the central storage place for questionnaires or questionnaire sections that you want to make available for inclusion in other questionnaires. For example, if most of the questionnaires that your company creates have a standard set of demographic questions, it makes sense to store them in the library so that they can be imported into every questionnaire. This saves time and ensures that the questions are identical in all questionnaires.

The standard Questionnaire Library is divided into two sections. The Shared section (FMRoot\Shared\Questionnaire Library Items) contains questionnaires that are available to anyone who uses Build. The Roles section is divided into subfolders containing questionnaires that are accessible only by members of a particular role; so, for example, only members of RoleA will be able to access questionnaires saved in the RoleA area of the library (FMRoot\Roles\RoleA\Questionnaire Library Items).

Build does not support personal libraries, although if a role has only one member that library is effectively a personal library.

Build comes with a collection of predefined surveys that are installed in different folders within the Shared section of the library. Some questionnaires are complete and ready to use with no further design work required, while others require minor customization such as replacing a marker for a company name or product with your own company or product name. A third group are smaller questionnaires that you would probably import into your own questionnaire files and then expand to form more detailed surveys.

The exact structure of the main library sections will be determined by the person responsible for maintaining the library, but it will probably consist of a number of folders for different types of questionnaires. Each folder can contain subfolders or questionnaires, in much the same way that you organize your files on your hard drive. You can use the library in the following ways:

You can save the questionnaire you are working on as a library file. Once the file has been created, the questionnaire remains open for you to work on. Any changes that you make are only saved to the questionnaire file in the project’s folder within your user folder; the library copy of the questionnaire is not updated unless you re-save the questionnaire to the library.

All files in the library are available to anyone who uses Build. However, the questionnaires do not become available to users of other activities until you check the files in to the Shared folder manually or run an activity that does this automatically.

If you add a questionnaire file that uses a template to the library, you will need to create a separate folder within the library to store the template and any files that the template uses, and then copy those files into that folder manually. (Later versions of Build will do this automatically.) To do this, see Copying questionnaires that use templates to the library.

When you import a library questionnaire into the current questionnaire, Build compares the names of the items it is importing against the names of items in the current questionnaire. If any of the item names already exists, Build appends a number to the item’s name so that it still has a unique name.

Build inserts the items from the library file at the current point in the questionnaire.

Build does not use the library for storing shared pictures and presentation templates, although it uses a similar structure of folders and subfolders for templates.

Build stores templates that are available to all users in a Shared Presentation Styles folder, and templates that are available to all members of a particular role in a role-specific Presentation Styles folder (Roles\RoleA\Presentation Styles, for instance).

The Presentation Styles folder represents the project’s folder in your user folder, so it points to a different location depending on the project you are working on. If you have templates that are specific to the current project this is where to store them so that the Launch activity can find them.

Build does not have a central repository for picture files. Instead, it looks for them in a folder that it refers to as My Images. This corresponds to the project’s folder within your user folder, so My Images for project 1 is not the same as My Images for project 2.

When you click the button for associating a picture with a response, or a presentation template with a question, the dialog displays all the files that are available for this project. Some are shared and others are specific to the current project. If the file you want is not listed, you must upload it before you can use it.

You can download files onto your computer if you need to edit them, for example, if you want to change a template’s page layout or color scheme. Then upload the file to replace the original, or rename it and then upload it.