Step by Step Instruction Booklet - Professional Quest: Survey

Step‐by‐Step

Instruction Booklet

UNDERSTANDING THE

SAMPLE SURVEYS

Understanding the sample surveys Professional Quest

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Table of Contents ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

KEY COMPONENTS ........................................................................................................................................................................... 3 THE EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION SURVEY SAMPLE AND THE SAMPLE EXIT INTERVIEW ......................................................................................... 3

DESIGNING THE EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION SAMPLE SURVEY FROM SCRATCH ........................................................................... 3

SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 DIPOLAR’S SURVEY REQUIREMENTS ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Using Professional Quest Designer ............................................................................................................................................................. 5 Inserting a Page ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Selecting a theme ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Inserting Questions ................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Creating a Flow Control ............................................................................................................................................................................. 15 Previewing the Survey ............................................................................................................................................................................... 16

DESIGNER – ADVANCED FEATURES ........................................................................................................................................ 18

KEY COMPONENTS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 18 ADVANCED FEATURES OF PROFESSIONAL QUEST 2007 ‐ DESIGNER .......................................................................................................... 18

Progress bars ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Using Hidden Questions to Store Data in the Questionnaire .................................................................................................................... 19 Copying and moving questions ................................................................................................................................................................. 20 Flow Control (Question flow control and advanced page branching) ....................................................................................................... 21 Data Piping ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24 HTML Content Tags ................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Hierarchical Text Lists (Multi‐layered drop down lists) ............................................................................................................................. 28 Creating Templates and Themes ............................................................................................................................................................... 29

PROJECT MANAGER ............................................................................................................................................................... 32

KEY COMPONENTS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 32 Creating a new project ......................................................................................................................................................... 32 Importing respondents data into our project ........................................................................................................................ 32 Distributing our questionnaire .............................................................................................................................................. 33 Importing the responses ....................................................................................................................................................... 35 Recoding ............................................................................................................................................................................... 36


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About this Document This document is an introduction to Professional Quest 2007. At first you will find a quick list of the basic features available, you will see step by step how we created our sample survey from scratch by using the basic features of Designer. Later in this document you will see briefly how we used Project Manager to distribute questionnaires and manage the respondent’s data.

Key Components There are a number of components that make up a survey. The creation of a survey generally follows a standard set of steps as follows:

1. Insert Pages 2. Insert Text Blocks (e.g. Survey instructions or thank you notes) 3. Insert Questions 4. Create flow control (e.g. restricting respondents so they only see questions that relate to them) 5. Preview survey and finalise layout

By the time you finish reading this document you will be able to design surveys with a great deal of functionality.

The Employee Satisfaction Survey Sample and the Sample Exit Interview The Employee Satisfaction Survey Sample and the Sample Exit Interview designs and projects can be found in the samples directory in Professional Quest. We will look at how each sample has been created in subsequent sections of this document. A live demonstration of these and more samples can also be found here:

Designing the Employee Satisfaction Sample Survey from scratch

Summary Designing a survey can be split into three major areas as follows:

We will look at each of these areas in detail below by considering a survey that has been developed for our company Dipolar.


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Dipolar’s Survey Requirements Dipolar wants to design a survey to evaluate their employee’s level of satisfaction. They want this survey to dynamically change as they answer, that way they can get more specific information about employees from different departments. The key features required in this survey are:

• The company wants to obtain their employee’s age, salary range, how long they have worked for the company and how do they feel at work.

• There is a new Call Logging System used only by the Customer Service Department, and the company needs to ask those particular employees how they feel about this new system. They want to use flow control to restrict who sees these questions.

• Finally the company also wants to know how their employees feel about Management, their remuneration and conditions and their job security.

As for any survey, we first need to have a clear understanding of:

1. What questions need to be asked 2. Where these questions are going to be placed, and 3. Under what conditions they are going to be displayed to the respondent

This tutorial will give you all the information you need to get started and to elaborate a design that meets all the requirements mentioned above.

Analysis Most of the time you would write down on a piece of paper what questions you want to ask and then you would put an arrow indicating where to go next if the answer was yes, etc. There is nothing wrong with that, you can also draw diagrams like the following:

Implementation The following are a set of steps taken in order to develop the design of a survey using Professional Quest 2007 Designer:

The following is a summary of steps for designing a survey from scratch:


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This diagram summarizes the steps taken to create a survey, you can see steps such as insert a page, set page properties, insert a text block etc. as we progress through this document you will understand what all those steps mean, but for now we will start by learning how to use Professional Quest 2007 – Designer.

Using Professional Quest Designer Professional Quest Designer allows you to create any survey you wish from scratch using your own questions and survey layout. Let’s have a look at how we used the Designer to create the Sample Survey design:

1. The Professional Quest Designer can be run from the Windows Start Menu as shown below.

Figure 1

2. As you can see, Professional Quest 2007 is divided into two programs, the first one is Designer which has a blue icon and then we have Project Manager which has a red icon, for this example we used Designer, the one that has the blue icon.


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3. When opening designer there is a window in the centre, this window is called Content Manager. In the content manager window you can see a tree structure with some Help files, Recent Design files and Favourite Design files:

4. We created a new Design file by clicking the New button which is located at the top left corner of the program window as described in figure 3.

5. A New Design window popped up asking us what type of design we wanted to create, there is a wealth of options that you can choose from depending on the type of survey that you wish to create. In the New Design window there are several tabs, the first one is called General, the second one is called Education and Training and so on, each of this tabs contain a series of predefined designs which we can use as a starting point as described in figure 4.

Figure 2

Figure 3


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We went to the General tab and selected New Questionnaire and clicked OK, as described in figure 4.

6. The Create New Questionnaire window popped up, this window contains several input fields, but the most important are:

a. Name b. Description c. Designer Details

We named this design “Employee Satisfaction Survey”. We also entered who created this survey, our manager and the company name and then we clicked on OK as described in figure 5.

On the left side of the program window there is a window called Questionnaire Design and on the right side there is another window called Property Sheet.

Figure 4

Figure 5


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The Questionnaire Design window contains a tree structure of all the objects (pages, questions, etc.) that belong to our design and the Property sheet window will display the properties of whatever object you select in the Questionnaire Design window.

Inserting a Page 7. We then added a page to our survey.

To insert a new page in the survey we right clicked on the root object (Employee Satisfaction Survey) in the Design window and clicked on Insert Page...

8. A New Page window popped up, this window contained two tabs, General and Advanced, under the General tab we have several fields but the most important ones are:

a. Page Name b. Page Title

In Page Name we typed “Introduction” and ticked the checkbox that says Use page name as page title in order to set the tile of the page to be the same as the page name as described in figure 8.

Figure 6

Figure 7


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9. Once we created a new page we added some introductory text to it since it’s the first page of our survey. We added text to the page by using a Text Block. To insert a text block we clicked on Insert ‐> Text Block as described in figure 9.

10. A window called New Text Block popped up, this window contains several fields but the most important are: a. Title b. Show title on form (check box) c. Block text

In the title field we typed “Introduction Text” and in the Block Text field we added the introductory text as described in figure 10.

NOTE: Notice that the text in figure 10 contains the following code: [@B+] and [@B‐] this is to make the text in between bold.

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10


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11. To take a look at how the survey looked like at that stage we clicked on Layout as described in figure 11. Figure 12 demonstrates how the questionnaire looked like at that stage.

Selecting a theme We wanted to change the look of our survey. We wanted it to look like it was part of our company’s website. In order to do that, we needed to change its Theme.

12. To change the appearance of our survey we had to click on Theme in the Questionnaire Layout window as described in figure 13.

A drop down list came up with quite a few different styles to choose from. We then selected Light & Dark Blue, which comes included in the installation of Professional Quest. Figure 14 shows how the survey looked like at that stage.

NOTE: You can create your own theme with your own logo. This is particularly useful if you wish your survey to blend nicely with your website.

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13


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Inserting Questions Once we created the introductory page we then needed to start putting questions in the survey, but before we did that we needed to insert another page:

13. We clicked on Insert‐>Page

14. In the New Page dialog on the General tab, in the Page Name field we typed “Employment Details” as described in figure 15.

15. We didn’t add a question straight away. We first needed to add a Question Group into our new page. By using question groups you can enhance your survey by:

a. Adding group titles to clearly distinguish between questions relating to different areas. b. Adding help text above a related group of questions. c. Allowing you to have different layout styles for each question group.

To create a new Question Group we referred to the Questionnaire Design window. We then right clicked on the page that we just created and selected Insert Question Group as described in figure 16.

16. A window called New Question Group popped up, in this window we made sure that the question group was created inside the new page which is called Employment Details, therefore we checked radio button that says Append to page “Employment Details”.

What is a Question Group? Question groups are used to group questions of the same topic or area into the same location, all questions for that specific topic will be automatically grouped under the same heading.

Figure 14

Figure 15

Figure 16


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Then we set the title of the new question group to be Employment Details and clicked on OK as described in figure 17.

17. We then added a question to this new question group. This question will be used to get the respondent’s name. We right clicked on Employee Details question group and selected Insert Question as described in figure 18.

18. A window called New Question popped up as described in figure 19. In this window we did the following:

a. Set the group this question belonged to b. Set the question’s title c. Set the question type(range of values/text/etc) d. Set the question’s text

We also needed to ask the respondent which department they lived in. Dipolar is divided into 3 departments as follows:

a. Customer Service b. Finance c. Sales and Marketing

Figure 17

Figure 18

Figure 19


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We created another question. The New Question window popped up and under the general tab we set the Title to “Department”, with “Range of Values” as the Question Type and with “Your Department” as the Question Text. Then we went to the Values tab. In the Values tab we added the departments as values. We clicked on new icon as described in figure 20.

19. A new dialog called Value Item Details popped up, in this dialog we entered all department names, then clicked on Close and then on OK as described in figure 21.

When the new question appeared it looked like in figure 22.

We then decided that instead of having a multiple choice question with radio buttons we wanted to have a drop down list. To do that we needed to select the question we have just created in our Questionnaire Design window and then on the Property Sheet window click on the Format tab and then tick the check boxes according to figure 23.

Figure 20

Figure 21

Figure 22


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20. In this drop down list we have set a default value, in this case the default value was not one of the departments. It was actually a Not Answered value. We clicked on the Not Answered tab. In the Not Answered field we typed “Enter Department” as described in figure 24.

21. To see the changes take effect we had to refresh the Layout window,

to do that we clicked on the Refresh button as shown in figure 25.

We then saw a drop down list instead of a multiple choice question with radio buttons as shown in figure 26.

Figure 23

Figure 24

Figure 25


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NOTE: Drop down list questions are not necessarily better than multiple choice questions, it really depends on the type of question that you want to ask.

22. Remember that we needed to ask the employees from the Customer Service Department more questions about the new Call Logging System? In the next section we will create a new page and use it with a flow control.

Creating a Flow Control 23. This new page should only be displayed if the employee specified that they belong to the Customer Service

Department earlier in the survey, for this to happen we needed to create a new Flow Control:

What is Flow control? It’s a mechanism that allow us to control what pages or questions are to be shown or hidden based on answers to the previous questions.

To create a new flow control we clicked on Format‐>Flow Control as described in figure 27.

24. The Flow Control Manager window popped up. We clicked on

the new icon as described in figure 28.

Figure 26

Figure 27

Figure 28


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25. In the list that popped up we clicked on Simple Page Branching as described in figure 29.

26. Once we selected Simple Page Branching, a window called Page Branching popped up. In this window you can select what pages to hide depending on the answer to a certain Range of Values question. Here we selected the page Customer Service to hide whenever the Department question is not equal to Customer Service as described in figure 30.

Previewing the Survey We can now preview our survey by clicking on Preview‐>Preview on local machine as described in figure 31.

If you have IIS installed on your computer and have “Local preview of HTML surveys” turned on, you should be able to see the survey on Internet Explorer and you will see exactly how it will look like once you distribute it.

NOTE: For more information about IIS please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services

To enable local preview on HTML (requires IIS) we did the following:

What is Simple Page Branching? Simple page branching is one form of Flow Control. It basically toggles a questionnaire page on or off based on the answer to a Range of Values question.

Figure 29

Figure 30

Figure 31


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We Clicked on File‐>Preferences

Then we clicked on Live Preview tab and selected Turn on local preview of HTML surveys and clicked on OK as described on figure 32.

This should give you enough information to get started with your own design, you can now add any questions, question groups, text blocks, pages and flow controls to your questionnaires.

If you wish to see the completed design and learn how to add extra functionality to your designs, such as custom images, hidden values for validation, displaying the respondent’s name on the survey and more, then please refer to the next section of this document.

Figure 32


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Designer – Advanced Features In the previous section we were looking at the basic features of a Professional Quest Survey. Now we want to look at some of the more advanced features of Professional Quest that were used to create our final survey.

Key Components 1. Progress Bars 2. Using hidden questions to store data in your questionnaire 3. Copying questions (helps you create similar questions quickly) and Moving questions 4. Flow Control(Question flow control and advanced page branching) 5. Data Piping

o Respondent data piping (attaching/using the respondent’s details in the questionnaire) o Question data piping (using the answer to a question in another part of the questionnaire)

6. HTML Content Tags o Adding custom images to your questionnaire o Using a tag/placeholder for repetitive text to be placed in several places of the questionnaire.

7. Hierarchical Text Lists (Multi‐layered drop down lists) 8. Creating Templates and Themes

Advanced Features of Professional Quest 2007 Designer

Progress bars Progress bars are a popular way of showing how far through a questionnaire a respondent has gone. In just a few clicks you can add a fully functional progress bar to your design, you can add different styles and you can place it almost anywhere in your questionnaire. The following are some of the most commonly used progress bars included in your installation of Professional Quest 2007:

The Sample Employee Satisfaction survey contains a progress bar. This is how we added a progress bar to it:

1. We clicked on File‐>Preferences. 2. The Preferences window popped up, and we clicked on

Progress Bars tab and selected the radio button Graphical percentage bar.


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3. We clicked on Medium from the drop down list (we wanted a medium sized progress bar), and we clicked OK as described on figure 33.

To show the progress bar on the survey, we also needed to enter a special command in the pages of our questionnaire (we have chosen to put it in the footer section). The command that was entered was {SECTION%}

To add the progress bars in the footer of our survey pages we clicked on the Header button in the Questionnaire Layout window as described in figure 34.

A new window called Header/Footer popped up. We clicked on the Footer tab then ticked the checkbox that says Show footer text, as described in figure 35.

We then clicked on the Footer Text tab, selected Custom Text radio button and typed {SECTION%} as described in figure 36. This command will be replaced by the progress bar that has just been selected.

If you open the sample file (Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey) you will see the progress bar as shown in figure 37.

Using Hidden Questions to Store Data in the Questionnaire We used hidden questions during the creation of Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire. You can find this sample in the samples folder in your installation of Professional Quest 2007.

Figure 33

Figure 34

Figure 35

Figure 36

Figure 37


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NOTE: Hiding questions is useful if you want data to be submitted along with the respondent’s answers. For example, the respondent’s full name and email address can be added to hidden questions in the questionnaire without requiring the respondent to enter this information. This makes the questionnaire response easily identifiable when analysing the responses later on. In our sample survey (Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire), in the second page, we have a hidden question, this question is called Name. The reason why this question is hidden is because the Name field is not filled by the user, its filled by Professional Quest. When the respondent logs in, Professional Quest validates him/her and retrieves their information (i.e. respondent’s name) from the database.

To hide the name question, we selected it and refer to the Property Sheet window, click on the ASP tab and tick the checkbox that says Hide question(ASP Web Surveys only) as described in figure 38.

We wanted Professional Quest to automatically fill the hidden question with the respondent’s name, therefore we ticked the checkbox where it says Autofill with and then selected Respondent Full Name in that same field in the drop down list as shown in figure 38.

Copying and moving questions

NOTE: Copying a question is handy if you want to save time i.e. if you want to create a new question with the same properties again, like a text box, if you don’t want to manually specify how many characters the textbox will support, or if you don’t want to manually specify its height and width one more time, then all you need to do is copy it and change its title and question text.

During the creation of Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire we had to copy a text question. Here is how we did it:

In the page titled Job Performance and Progress page we created a question of type text titled Job Performance ‐ Skills Utilized Comments, we then needed to create another question of type text just after it, therefore we decided to copy it by selecting the original question on Questionnaire Design window and then clicking on Copy/Move as described in the figure 39.

Figure 38

Figure 39


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We then changed the title of the copy question to Job Performance – Comments and set its text to “Please add any extra information related to job performance and progress”.

Moving a question is even easier, in this survey, in the page titled General Questions Regarding Dipolar there was a question titled The Firm – Other forms of Discrimination which we wanted to move next to the question titled The Firm – Discrimination and Harassment. What we did was click on the question The Firm – Other forms of Discrimination and then click on Copy/Move‐>Move Current Question, the Move Question dialog popped up and we modified it as described in figures 40 and 41.

Flow Control (Question flow control and advanced page branching) For this explanation we will use the sample Design file called Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey.

In the previous section of this document we talked about Simple Page Branching, now we will talk about Disable Question and Advanced Page Branching.

Disabled Question Advanced Page Branching A text or numeric question can be enabled or disabled based upon the answer to a Range of Values question. The most common use for this type of branching is for Range of Values questions with an “other, please specify” option. When using text question disabling, a text question for entering the “other” details can be enabled only when the “other, please specify” option is selected.

Advanced page branching toggles a questionnaire page on or off based on the answer to one or more questions of any type (not just range of value questions). This means that you have more than one way of analysing and responding to the answers being entered, whether is by looking at text being entered (or not being entered) or by looking at numbers being entered by the respondents.

When we were designing the employee satisfaction survey we needed to figure out a way of getting more information with regards to the causes of stress in the staff. That’s when we decided to create a question of type text that would prompt the employee to enter more information if they were stressed at work. If they were not stressed then that question would stay disabled, this is what we did:

Figure 40

Figure 41


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We Clicked on Format‐>Flow Control, the Flow Control Manager Window popped up. We then clicked on the New icon, the Enable/Disable Text Question dialog popped up and we modified it as described in

Figure 42

Figure 43

Figure 44


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As you can see, no JavaScript, no HTML or any other sort of programming was needed to make the page dynamically enable/disable the question as required.


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Data Piping There are two types of data piping, Respondent Piping and Question Data Piping.

Respondent Piping Question Data Piping “Respondent Piping” pipes the details of the respondent, or the person they are reviewing somewhere else in the questionnaire. This is only available for questionnaires that have respondents setup (i.e. respondents will log into the survey)

This is the most commonly used form of data piping. It is used for dynamic question text that incorporates a respondent’s earlier answers into the question being asked.

NOTE: In order to use question data piping, “questionnaire pages” must be used, and the data pipe must be used in a page which appears in a page containing the question that is supplying the response data for the data pipe.

For this example we will refer to the sample design called Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey which included in Professional Quest 2007.

When we were designing the survey we needed to get more information about the working conditions in our company. Therefore we decided to ask the respondents more details if they weren’t happy with the working conditions. In our survey design in the page titled Remuneration & Conditions there is a question which says “The conditions I work in are good”, and the answer could be anywhere between Agree Strongly and Disagree Strongly. If the respondent did not agree, then we would display an extra page showing them what they answered (this is when data piping takes place) and then asking them why.

To do that we created a new page just after the page called Remuneration & Conditions. Then we created a simple page branching flow control which would be used to display this new page if the respondent is not happy with the working conditions.

In this new page we inserted a multi‐line text question. The text of this question needed to use data piping and needed to say “You answered Disagree Strongly to the question “The conditions I work in are good”, please let us know why”.

To create this data piping we clicked on Format‐>Data Piping (as described in figure 45). The Data piping Manager window popped up and we clicked on the New icon and selected New Question Data Pipe as described in figure 46.

Figure 45


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Figure 46


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The Data Piping dialog popped up. In the Item Code field we entered WORKINGCONDITIONS and finally we selected the question “The conditions I work in are good” and clicked OK. Now all we needed to do was enter {WORKINGCONDITIONS} as part of the question text, this would then be replaced by the answer to the question “The conditions I work in are good”, as described in figures 47 and 48.

HTML Content Tags HTML Content tags are codes that can be placed within the content of a questionnaire. These codes are replaced with “fragments” of HTML code whenever the HTML version of the questionnaire is generated. A content tag always begins with square brackets and an “@” symbol, and ends in square brackets. For example, If a tag was created called “MYTAG”, this tag could be used in the questionnaire content by entering [@MYTAG].There are two types of HTML content tags:

Static Non‐static Static HTML content tags are internal tags that require no setup, and can never change. For example the tag [@B+] can be used to turn bolding on (as you might have seen in previous examples). This tag can be used within a questionnaire without any setup, because as with all static tags, it is a system tag that is always available.

Non‐static HTML content tags are completely flexible tags that can be setup as part of the design process. When a non‐static tag is created, it must be given a tag code, and the HTML content that will replace the tag within the questionnaire when a survey is generated. The content of the tag can be any valid fragment of HTML code, including code to show an image on the form.

Figure 47

Figure 48


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In our sample questionnaires we use both static and non‐static HTML content tags i.e. static tags for making text bold and non‐static tags for inserting the introduction text and images and text + images together.

In the following section we will refer to our Employee Satisfaction Survey sample.

When you look at the first page of the sample survey you will see some introductory text which explains the nature and the reasons why it was designed, you will also see some iPod pictures next to the introductory text. All of this is in just one non‐static HTML content tag. As described in figure 49.

How did we create this content tag? We clicked on Format‐>HTML Content Tags (as described in figure 50) then clicked on the New icon and then we proceeded to create the content tag by naming it INTRO and then we entered the HTML code. Then in the text block all we need to do is enter {INTRO} and it will be replaced by the content of your HTML content tag as described in figure 51.

Figure 49

Figure 50

Figure 51


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Hierarchical Text Lists (Multilayered drop down lists) Our Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire had to be designed for the employees of a multinational organization which has many departments across different countries. Some countries have more departments than others and you need to ask the employees what department they come from. Instead of having a huge drop down list showing them all the departments and countries of the organization, we used a Hierarchical Text List which consists of two drop down lists, the first one showing the country and the second one showing a dynamically generated list of departments according to the country the employee has chosen.

In the second page of Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire we created a Hierarchical Text List for asking the employees what department they were from, this is what we did to create it:

We clicked on Tools‐>Lists (as described in figure 52), the List Maintenance window popped up and we clicked on the Add Item icon (as described in figure 53). Note that there are a few predefined text lists already in the application. The New List dialog pops up and we enter the name of the list “Regions and Departments” as described in figure 54.

The Add List window pops up (as described in figure 55) and we proceed to create the list, however, there are rules that need to be followed, those rules are the following:

• The top row must contain the headings of your list

• Each row must have the same number of list items

• The last item in any particular row must be different that the last item in any other row. In this case when you see the finished list you will notice that “Human Resources” items are slightly different by having a period on the end of the 2nd Human Resources item.

• The maximum number of items within a particular row is four. (Our list contains two)

• The list items within a row are separated by the pipe (vertical line ‐> |) character.

Figure 54

Figure 52

Figure 53


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Here you can see all the items that we entered:

Now that the Hierarchical Text List has been created it can be used in any questionnaire, in as many questions as we wish.

To attach this list to our questionnaire we had to create a new question of type text, then we referred to the Property Sheet window and clicked on the Format tab in which we set the length of the question (200 characters),

it’s good to make sure the number of characters is big enough to hold the longest row in the hierarchical text list. Then we ticked the checkbox that says Answer may be selected from a list and then in the drop down list we selected Regions and Departments, and finally we ticked the checkbox that says Show as hierarchical list as described in figure 56.

Here we can see the Hierarchical Text List in action:

Creating Templates and Themes Templates ThemesA template is a html page that contains the background colours of the questionnaire, it can also contain a top bar with buttons, it can contain a table, it is entirely up to you how you want to format it, if you want the questionnaire to look just as if it was an integral part of your website then this is the file to work with.

A theme is a template file plus the font settings of all the questionnaire objects put together. There are several themes included in your installation of Professional Quest 2007 that you can choose from, you can also modify an existing theme or create a new one from scratch including the template file and save it as a Theme with the name of your choice.

Figure 55

Figure 56


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For our Sample Exit interview Questionnaire we created a template file with our company’s logo, here is a screenshot of the file when you open it with Internet explorer:

As you can see, this HTML file contains two codes, the first one is {Description} and the second one is {Quest Body}, {Description} will be replaced with the description we entered when we first created the survey which is “Sample Exit Interview Questionnaire” and {Quest Body} will be replaced by the questionnaire’s content.

To use this file in our questionnaire we had to place in a specific folder so that Designer recognizes it and allow us to select it, we had to put this file in the folder “[Installation directory]\QuestData\Web Resources\HTML Form Templates\”

Once we placed this html file in that folder we referred to the Questionnaire Layout window and clicked on HTML as described in figure 58.

Then the HTML window pops up, we clicked on (refresh) and select _Design Template.htm which is the name of the template file we created.

Figure 57

Figure 58


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If we wanted to make further changes to the appearance of the questionnaire then we would click on HTML and go through all the tabs in the HTML Options window as described in figure 59.

Once we were done with the design’s appearance we clicked on Theme‐>Save Layout as Theme as described in figure 60.

And then you proceed to enter the name of our theme.

Hope you enjoyed reading through this basic explanation of Designer as much as I enjoyed writing it. Our next section (Project Manager) will be about how the questionnaires are put on the internet and how we manage the respondent’s data.

Figure 59

Figure 60


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Project Manager Project Manager Professional Quest – Project Manager application creates projects based upon the questionnaire designs that have been created using the Professional Quest – Designer. Once a project has been built, you can distribute, analyse and report on your questionnaire.

Key Components 1. Creating a new project 2. Importing respondents data into our project 3. Distributing our questionnaire 4. Importing the responses

The following is a brief explanation on how we created a project for our Sample Exit Interview design.

Creating a new project We opened Professional Quest – Project and clicked on the New icon. The Build Questionnaire Project for Design File window popped up. We opened the Samples folder and clicked on Sample Exit Interview Questionaire.qqs as described in figure 61.

Then we clicked on open, and the New Project dialog popped up. We named it Sample Exit Interview Survey, and we then clicked finish.

This created our project using an Access database to

store the respondent’s data and their responses.

Importing respondents data into our project Dipolar has a list of employees in an Excel file, what we had to do is get that data into our project. Here is what we did:

Professional Quest – Project Manager can import data from a tab‐delimited text file, but we first needed to get the data sitting in the excel file exported in to a tab delimited text file so that we could then import that text file into Project.

To do that we opened the Excel with MS Excel, and we clicked on File‐>Save as… and then we selected

Figure 61

Figure 62


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the format as a tab delimited text file.

Once we had the text file, in Project we clicked on Respondents‐>Import Respondents‐>From Text File as described in figure 62.

Then we clicked on Continue. Then we selected the file that we just created and modified the settings according to the figure 63, and then we clicked on Import.

In figure 63 what we did was first of all select the text file that we wanted to import from. Then at the bottom of the window we can see that you can map the data in the text file directly to the respondent fields in Project, as you can see we have set the Identifier to be automatically generated, the password (which is used to log into the questionnaire) will be automatically generated, the given names have been set to

Then the Respondent Maintenance window popped up and we clicked on Finish. Now that we have the project setup with the respondent’s details we can distribute it. There are several ways of distributing a project as described in the next section.

Distributing our questionnaire

Web Questionnaire Distribution The most powerful, flexible and productive method of distribution is through a Web‐based questionnaire. This type of questionnaire can be set up to run on the Internet, or on your company’s Intranet. Before we proceeded to distribute our questionnaire we had to review our distribution defaults, to do that we had to click on File‐>Preferences. The Preferences window popped up and we clicked on the Distribution tab. When considering what preferences we wanted to set, we had to ask ourselves the two main questions:

1. How do I intend to get the distribution files created by Professional Quest onto my web server? 2. Will respondents usually need to log in to the questionnaires I create?

There are three methods of publishing to choose from:

None Send via FTP Copy to Location If you intend to move the distribution files manually to the web server i.e. You will email the files to an IT person to place on the web server.

FTP (file transfer protocol) is the standard method of uploading files to a remote website. Professional Quest can automatically place the distribution files on your website if you have the correct details. Which generally are, remote server I.P. address , username and password.

If the web server is directly accessible from your network i.e. There is a mapped drive that directly points to the web server. Professional Quest can copy the files immediately to that location.

Figure 63


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In this case we have chosen None. We will generate the files and place them into the web server manually

NOTE: Professional Quest can work with MS Access and SQL Server. If you work with Access then you will publish the database file to your preferred location in the web server. If you are using SQL Server then you could choose the server of your choice i.e. Your company’s SQL server or a third party SQL Server or you could also distribute in our web server. For more information please refer to http://www.professionalquest.com/

Now that we have imported our respondent’s information into the project, we will tell Professional Quest – Project Manager to ask every respondent to log in to the questionnaire. To do that we need to click on File‐>Preferences, then click on the Distribution tab and tick the checkbox that says “Respondents must log in to complete the survey” as described in figure 64.

Figure 64

To publish our survey through FTP we had to click on Distribution ‐> New ‐> Web Survey (Microsoft‐based Web Server) as described in figure 65.


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Figure 65

Then we entered the name of our distribution and clicked on OK.

Then on the Publish tab, we clicked on the radio button that says Do not Publish as described in figure 66.

Figure 66

Finally we clicked on Generate, a progress bar popped up, when it was finished we were taken to the directory where the distribution files were placed so that we could copy them and take them to our web server.

Importing the responses We decided to use MS Access in our Sample survey. After we published the questionnaire we waited for a few days just to give the respondents time to answer. And then this is what we did:

We went to our web server and copied the database file into our desktop. We opened our Sample Exit Interview Survey project and clicked on Collection‐>Responses from Local Database as described in figure 67.

Then we browsed to the Access file we just placed on the Desktop and clicked on Open. And that was it! With the responses imported into our project we now had enough data to produce different types of reports.

Figure 67


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Recoding Recoding is a technique used to get statistical data from a comments question. This is done by adding an invisible text list in the survey design. Once the responses have all been collected, the administrator of the survey will be able to read each comments question and will fill in the invisible text list according to the answers given. Then the administrator will be able to view the statistics for that comments question.

Once the survey administrator collects the data, he will use the Text Manager to select the comments question and the recoding list question so that he can perform the recoding as shown in figure 68.

Once the administrator is done selecting the question to be recoded he will then go to each comment entered and enter a recoding value or values according to the contents of the answer as shown in figure 69. It’s like changing a comments question to a text list question.

Figure 68


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Figure 69

As shown in figure 70 we can now see the statistics from the hidden question list and we use that data to generate reports on the comments etc.

Figure 70

Documents

Step by Step Instruction Booklet - Professional Quest: Survey