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A Grid question is a question in tabular format, where the respondent can select an answer from a scale. This type of question is typically used to give products or statements a rank or score. In the Survey Tree toolbox, the object looks as shown below. In the example, the question is asking the respondent to grade a number of properties for importance - .
Figure 1 - A Grid object as it appears in the Survey Tree
Figure 2 - An example of a Grid question with the standard tabular layout
The various properties and settings available for this form are listed in the Properties page (go to Question Properties Overview for more information).
You can allow the respondents to select an answer option in the grid by clicking within a grid cell area rather than having to click exactly on a button, and you can change the color of selected grid cells.
Settings in the Advanced WI Features tab (go to Advanced WI Features for more information) allow you to change the layout of the form to Grid Bars (go to Grid Bars for more information), Card Sort (go to Card Sort for more information) or Slider (go to Slider for more information).
A variation of the Grid object is the 3D-Grid (go to 3D Grid Object for more information).
Multi Grid Object
The standard 3D-grid object has multi questions as the columns. It is therefore normally inadvisable to use the standard 3D-grid in surveys that are intended for mobile responses, as the rendition may cause problems for the respondent.
The Multi Grid object is a 3D-grid object in which the Multi questions are the rows of the grid – it is effectively a transposed 3D-grid. The Multi Grid object is supported in all rendering modes; desktop, mobile, CATI and CAPI. The Multi Grid object is available to Standard users and can be added/edited in Doc2Survey. In the Survey Tree toolbox, the object looks as shown below - .
Figure 3 - A Multi Grid object as it appears in the Survey Tree
Figure 4 - Example of a Multi Grid in use
The various properties and settings available for this form are listed in the Properties page (go to Question Properties Overview for more information). Note that the question type is always “normal” and this cannot be changed. This means that a Multi Grid cannot be set to for example Hidden or Background.
Outside of Authoring, (in Reportal, Data Editing/Exporting, Data Processing etc…) this node appears as a clickable node that expands to the individual multi questions contained within the grid. There is no special handling of the Multi Grid question types in Reportal; it behaves the same as a 3D grid containing multis. From a data perspective, Multi Grids are treated as a set of individual multi questions.
The naming convention used for the labeling is:
Multi Grid question id + underscore + code in the “questions” list.
For example; if the Multi Grid is “g1”, the underlying multi questions in the multi grid are “g1_q1”, “g1_q2”, “g1_q3” etc. and the answer codes are 1, 2, 3, etc. then the columns in the database for the individual answers will then be:
g1_q1_1, g1_q1_2, g1_q1_3 …
g1_q2_1, g1_q2_2, g1_q2_3 …
g1_q3_1, g1_q3_2, g1_q3_3 … etc.
The Multi Grid object supports the following question/answer properties and options:
- Order of the questions/answers (rows/columns)
- Keep position for questions (rows)
- Exclusive answers (columns)
- Other answers (these appear in the column headers)
- Answer buttons (Advanced WI setting)
- Column, row and question masking
- Can be used in the condition builder
- Repeat headers (entry of answer Others is only possible in the first header row)
- Bottom headers (entry of answer Others is only possible in the first header row)
The following functionality is not supported:
- Answer group support
- Loop reference lists