Locking Questions for Coding

If two or more coders attempt to work on the same question at the same time, the database will be corrupted. Therefore Authoring allows only one coder to be allocated to a question at one time.

A window in which questions can be allocated to coders is therefore the first window that appears when you start the coding system. The window also displays the bindings between the open-text questions and the corresponding single/multi questions. To open the window:

1. Go to the Survey Data > Coding > Administrate Online Coding menu command (this is available to users with the Administrate Online Coding permission for the survey).

The Administrate Online Coding window opens - .



Figure 1 - The Assign Coders tab of the Administrate Online Coding window

This page lists all the questions that are available for coding (in the figure above, two questions are available). To allocate a coder to a question:

2. In the Coder column, click the down-arrow beside the field for the appropriate question - (see the figure below).

A drop-down list of the coders who have been given permission to work on this survey, appears (go to Permissions Setup for more information).



Figure 2 - Selecting a coder to work on a question

3. Select the coder you wish to allocate to the question and click Save.

To allocate a coder to several questions at once, check the boxes to the left of the questions you wish to assign to the coder then select a coder from the drop-down list beside the Assign Selected button. Thereafter click the Assign Selected button (the assignments will be saved automatically).

When a coder is allocated to a question, a hyperlink is created to the coding window for that specific question and that specific coder (on the Survey Data > Coding > Online Coding tab the Open Question and Coded Question texts turn blue). Only the coder who is allocated to the question will see this hyperlink, so only that coder can access the question. Note that many coders can have access to one survey, but only one coder can work on a specific question at one time.

Note: To speed up the presentation of the list, counts are not initially displayed. To view the count for a particular question, click Get count for that question. To view all the counts for the list, click the Get all counts button in the list toolbar. Note that generating the counts may take some time; a progress spinner is displayed during the retrieval process.