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THE SURVEY PROGRAM CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 2 REQUIREMENTS 2 WHAT SURVEY DOES 3 HOW THE PROGRAM OPERATES 4 FILES ON THE DISTRIBUTION DISK 5 CLASSIFICATION OF QUESTIONS 5 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES 6 - 12 DESIGNING A SURVEY 13 GETTING STARTED 14 RUNNING SURVEY 15 CHANGING AN EXISTING SURVEY 17 THE SURVEY PROGRAM SURVEY is an unpublished proprietary work by Walter K. MacAdam, for limited distribution The program is not copyrighted. You have permission to use SURVEY, and to copy it and distribute it to your friends and associates, or to electronic bulletin boards, provided that the following conditions are met: 1). No fees are charged other than for distribution. 2). SURVEY may only be distributed in its original, unmodified state, including SURVEY.EXE, MKSRVY.EXE, RXSURVEY.EXE, and SURVEY.DOC. You are urged to try the program on an opinion survey of your own making. You will probably be pleasantly surprised at the results and at the usefulness of the program. If, after trying the program and using it, you believe it has been of value to you, a voluntary contribution, not to exceed $10 would be appreciated. In any event, feel free to copy and distribute it to your heart's content. A contribution will put your name on a list for information on future updates. Your suggestions will help improve the program. Checks, suggestions, or comments can be sent to: Walter K. MacAdam 10 Rayton Rd. Hanover, NH 03755 Thank you. STANDARD DISCLAIMER Walter K. MacAdam shall have no responsibility nor liability to you or any other person, or persons, or entity with respect to loss or damage caused by or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by use of SURVEY and/or its documentation. This expressly includes, but is not limited, to loss or invalidation of data, programs, files, equipment, or business opportunity or good will. 12/90 1. THE SURVEY PROGRAM INTRODUCTION Many organizations and individuals occasionally find it useful to carry out surveys on a variety of subjects. Once the responses have been collected, there comes the often burdensome task of analyzing the results and printing them in meaningful form. For this function, however, a computer can do much to save time, simplify the analysis, and produce reports in the desired format. The SURVEY program has been developed to serve this purpose. SURVEY has specific application to surveys in which responses to questions can be identified by numbers. For these cases a mark or number can be entered on a "box" associated with each response choice. For questions not requiring a rank order, respondents will be asked to place a mark in the box for the selected item. For this reason, each box should have an identifying number on the response form so that the marked box number can be entered into the computer by the analyst when inputting response data. Questions involving rank ordering responses, or those requesting specific quantities will have the numbers written into the boxes by the respondents. Write-in responses should be avoided with this system since they are difficult to handle efficiently. In an extreme case, however, they might be classified as a numerical type, based on the judgment of those analyzing the results. All this suggests that caution should be used in trying to apply this program to an existing survey designed without these simplifying features. REQUIREMENTS The program requires a minimum of 256K of random access memory in an IBM compatible computer. The program uses dynamic memory allocation which allocates most of the memory requirements at run time, based on the particular survey requirements. This results in efficient memory use. The program can be run on one or two floppy disks, or on a hard drive. The files produced can be maintained on a disk/directory separate from the programs. 2. WHAT SURVEY DOES The program has the ability to analyze surveys involving questions with single or multiple choice answers, and permits straight forward keyboard entry of all data in the sequence that it appears in the questionnaire form, one response at a time. At any time during the response input procedure, you can print the current survey results to the screen. You could also print these intermediate analyses to the printer, but you can save time and printer paper by waiting until all pages in the screen report meet your final requirements and an appropriate number of replies have been processed. Input can be temporarily discontinued at any time, with the response data stored on the disk until the work is resumed. For each questionnaire, up to 100 questions can be accommodated, and each may have up to 40 choices. More than 1000 responses can be included, although most surveys can obtain results providing a reasonable degree of confidence with only a few hundred. The practical limitation is the amount of random access memory. Any number of surveys can be handled, with separate profile and data files kept on the disk. The program has the capability of summarizing results by demographic subdivisions. For example, separate analyses can be made in terms of subdivisions such as age group, gender, or the geographical area in which the respondent is located. If this demographic classification is desired, all that is necessary is to indicate at the beginning of the set-up procedure that demographic separation is required, and to provide the number and titles of the desired groupings or "populations". The printed analysis following data entry will then include summaries for: (1), all responses; (2), responses from each classification; and (3), responses from those who failed to make a demographic selection. Up to nine demographic groups can be accommodated. Note that trying to adapt existing surveys that include the demographic separation as a question other than No.1 will present problems in data entry, and should be avoided. The final printed results are produced in report form, ready for reproduction without retyping or re-formatting. The report can be produced in a continuous print without page breaks, or can be printed in "form feed" or on separate sheets with a pause between sheets for paper replacement. In the latter two cases, a feature of the program prevents splitting a response summary for a single question between two printed pages. Because of the program's ability to produce a comprehensive and detailed report, it is advisable to consider, at an early stage, the number of printed pages that would result, based on the number of planned questions, choices and demographic separations. This aspect is discussed later in these instructions. 3. An important capability of the program is the option to examine and report possible correlation between the responses to two different questions. For example, a commercial organization might want to test the effectiveness of an advertising program on a local radio station. This might be done by noting the response to a brand recognition question by those who indicated, in responding to a separate question, that they listened to the station, and then comparing this with the recognition by those who did not. The program can include the correlation in terms of a percentage figure and can include the results in easily understandable format in the printed results. This makes it unnecessary to try to discern possible correlation by developing demographic groupings for answers to a single question, and trying to probe the voluminous data for possible correlation. HOW THE PROGRAM OPERATES The SURVEY program first asks for some information on the format of the questionnaire and stores this on the disk as a profile file for later use. As covered in more detail in a later section, this information includes the number and type of questions as well as the number of choices in the answer to each question. If correlation measurement is required, this information is requested. The report title and desired text for use in the summarized output report is also stored on the disk in this one-time operation. With the survey format defined, the user is returned to the menu to select options for introducing the response data, one response at a time. This is entered from the keyboard in the same sequence as it appears on the response form. The program prompts for choice selection numbers for each question. The summarizing printed report includes the score for the response choice in each question and a percentage valuation for each of the choices. In addition, for each question, there is a count of the cases in which there was no entry by the respondent. To provide an opportunity to become familiar with program operation and data entry, a short sample survey file, DEMO.DTA and its profile file, DEMO.PRO, are included in the distribution disk. You can access these files and print the results of this sample survey on the screen. You can also gain experience in data entry by adding more response data of your own choosing and noting the changed results. The DEMO questions are the same as those included on example forms later in these instructions. 4. FILES ON THE DISTRIBUTION DISK The programs on the distribution disk consist of the following. At least the first three of these are required in the drive/directory used to run SURVEY. SURVEY.EXE, MKSRVY.EXE, RXSURVEY.EXE, DEMO.PRO, DEMO.DTA, SURVEY.DOC, and READ.ME. When you create a profile for your own survey, MKSRVY.EXE will create a format file with a name you have chosen, with the extension, "PRO". If you are using more than one survey, individual questionnaire response files will be added as response data is entered for each survey. These files will have titles assigned by the user and will be located on the drive/directory assigned in the set up module, MKSRVY.EXE. CLASSIFICATION OF QUESTIONS Since survey questions vary in such matters as number of choices available and may offer the possibility of rank ordering the selections, the program will need to know in advance the type of question involved. It will also need to know the number of choices available and the title or designation for each choice. This information is stored in the profile file. Most survey questions can be classified into one of four general types which we designate as follows: TYPE A Questions with two or more possible response choices, but with only ONE CHOICE permitted. TYPE B Questions with two or more possible choices with NO LIMITATION on the number of choices that might be made. TYPE C Questions in which the respondent is asked to RANK ORDER the preference for each choice. TYPE D Questions in which numbers are entered for some or all response options. This is an INVENTORY type question in which the final report will total the entries for each selection option. Questions making a demographic separation are, of course, single-choice questions, and the program will automatically classify them as such. 5. SOME ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES Before proceeding with detailed instructions on procedure, it may be helpful to see examples of the different types of questions that can be handled by SURVEY, how almost any type of multiple choice questionnaire can be analyzed, and how the results are included in finalized report form. The tables on the following pages present examples of several types of multiple choice questions and the typical response summaries that are derived by the SURVEY program. If your survey requires a demographic subdivision, remember that ANY DEMOGRAPHIC SEPARATING QUESTION MUST ALWAYS BE THE FIRST. Note that, in this case, the program will automatically prompt you for the answer to this question as Question No. 1. Table I is a sample of a question making a demographic separation between northern and southern company divisions. - - - - - - - - - - - - TABLE I SAMPLE DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTION Q1. Please place a mark in the square corresponding to the regional division in which your company is located. __ 1. |__| Northern __ 2. |__| Southern 6. Table II illustrates a situation in which three types of questions are included. The first type requires only one answer and, for the purposes of the program, is designated Type A. The second permits one or more choices, listed in any order, and without order of preference. This is designated Type B. The third question on Table I, Type C, permits more than one choice, but respondents are asked for all answers in the descending order of preference, 1 being the highest in rank. 7. TABLE II SAMPLE SURVEY (Abbreviated) Q2. Please mark the square corresponding to the number of employees in your company. Mark only ONE. __ 1. |__| Less than 10 __ 2. |__| 10 to 25 __ 3. |__| 26 to 50 __ 4. |__| 51 to 100 __ 5. |__| Over 100 Q3. Please mark ANY of the following factors having an IMPORTANT positive influence on your company's profits. __ 1. |__| Good Labor Market __ 2. |__| Climate - Environment __ 3. |__| Nearby major airport __ 4. |__| Nearby rail facilities Q4. What are the most IMPORTANT reasons for your selecting particular brands of computer software? Please rank 1,2,3, etc. for the following reasons in descending order of importance. __ |__| Manufacturer's reputation __ |__| Price __ |__| Dealer support __ |__| Recommendation by associates 8. Table III illustrates the typical analysis print-out produced by SURVEY when processing survey responses of the type shown on Table II. Note that both a numerical score and a percentage valuation is printed for each response choice, and that a count is made of those who failed to make a response. In each case the results are sorted in descending rank order so as to provide easy recognition of the most important choices. 9. TABLE III SAMPLE SURVEY RESULTS SUMMARY PRINTED BY THE SURVEY PROGRAM There were 4 responses entered from this questionnaire. QUESTION 2. (Single Choice) For responding companies, the employee numbers ranged as follows: CHOICE SCORE PERCENT 26 to 50 2 50.0 Less than 10 1 25.0 10 to 25 1 25.0 51 to 100 0 0.0 Over 100 0 0.0 Made no response 0 QUESTION 3. (4 choices maximum, without ranking) Those responding marked the following important factors influencing profits. CHOICE SCORE PERCENT Good labor market 3 50.0 Climate - Environment 1 16.7 Nearby major airport 1 16.7 Nearby rail facilities 1 16.7 Made no response 1 QUESTION 4. (4 choices maximum, with rank ordering) The most important reasons given for selecting software were ranked: CHOICE SCORE PERCENT Price 14 36.8 Dealer support 11 28.9 Recommendation by associates 8 21.1 Manufacturer's reputation 5 13.2 Made no response 0 10. Table IV illustrates a questionnaire format frequently used to assess gradations in views on certain questions or statements. In this example, only ONE ANSWER is required to each question. It is therefore of the type designated A, as previously noted. The gradations in the respondent's view in this case are "Agree Strongly", "Agree", "Undecided", "Disagree", and "Disagree Strongly". The Table IV format can easily be handled by the SURVEY program by entering the column numbers for the individual choices. In this case the results will be printed out in the format of Question 2 in Table II. The choice titles then would be "Agree Strongly", "Agree", "Not Decided", etc. The scores and percentages would be indicated for each choice. 11. TABLE IV SAMPLE SURVEY (Abbreviated) Please mark the square corresponding to answers to the following questions. 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE NOT DISAGREE STRONGLY AGREE DECIDED DISAGREE STRONGLY __ __ __ __ __ Q5. Do you believe that |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| Television has had a bad influence on children's morals? __ __ __ __ __ Q6. Do you believe that |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| seat belts should be required in all automobiles? __ __ __ __ __ Q7. Do you believe that |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| the U.S.should work toward a balanced budget? __ __ __ __ __ Q8. Are you willing to |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| give up your frost- free refrigerator to reduce energy consumption? 12. DESIGNING A SURVEY Designing a useful survey is not an easy undertaking. Much thought must be put into selecting the appropriate questions and response choices, and limiting their number to reasonable values. No attempt will be made in these instructions to provide a comprehensive discussion of survey design. To make the SURVEY program fully effective, however, the following guidelines should be observed. 1. Make sure your survey consists of sequentially numbered questions and that each optional response is also designated by a number. These numbers are for your use in entering response data and have no significance as far as the respondents are concerned. When responses are received and before entering data, you may find it convenient to number the sheets sequentially. This is to help you avoid entering a response more than once and to correlate with the response numbers referred to in the SURVEY program. 2. If you try to adapt this program to the responses from an existing questionnaire produced without reference to this program, and in which the demographic information is not obtained in the FIRST QUESTION, your data input will be seriously affected. Design your surveys with the program in mind and produce the profile file in the normal manner. 3. Avoid write-in response options if at all possible. They are difficult to classify. 4. Keep in mind, that for the purpose of printing the final report, you will be asked to provide a "Response Summary Statement" for each question. Example: "For the responding companies, the employee numbers ranged as follows:". This statement should not exceed one line in length. 5. Make sure you can classify each question into one of the following types: A. Only one selection can be made B. Any or all response options can be selected C. Selection of options in descending rank order D. Numbers entered in any option are cumulated in final report. 13. 6. The number of printed pages produced in the final report should be carefully considered in the design process. You should assume that no more than an average of about four questions can be analyzed per printed page. If you have demographic subdivisions this will multiply the number of pages by one more than the number of demographic separations. In the interest of maximizing the survey returns and making a useful report you will want to limit the number of questions and question choices to those providing the most meaningful and useful information. As an example, an average 40-question report with six demographic subdivisions would require about 70 pages. As mentioned earlier, you should use the screen print option for most of your intermediate viewing of the report results. 7. Before distributing the questionnaire you may find it helpful to run the SURVEY program, make your profile file, move to Option 1 in the Action Menu, designate your data file name, and then enter two or three fictitious responses. You should then use Option 6 in the Action Menu to print the preliminary results on the screen. At this time, do not send any output to the printer. Check the screen display to see that the desired format is achieved. When you are ready to start entering actual responses, be sure to first select Option 1 again "Start entering data for a NEW survey .." and this will delete any trial data in your data file. If you later temporarily discontinue genuine data entry, remember to use Option 2, "Add response data to an existing data file" when you start another session. Don't use Option 1 again unless you want to start over from the beginning. GETTING STARTED Installation on Floppy Disks To install SURVEY on a floppy disk, format the disk with your System Files (FORMAT/S). Place the distribution disk in Drive A and type "Copy a:*.* b:" (Omit the quotes). If you only have one floppy drive, you will have to exchange disks periodically. Installation on a Hard Disk To install SURVEY on a hard disk drive, it is probably a good idea to establish a separate sub-directory with a title such as "SRVY". Follow the directions in your DOS manual for this procedure. Then move to this sub-directory using the Change Directory (CD) procedure and place the distribution disk in Drive A. Type "copy a:*.*" (omit quotes) and press ENTER. Type "DIR" to see that the program modules have been successfully transferred. 14. RUNNING SURVEY Before running SURVEY for the purpose of establishing a profile file, you should have before you a sample response form for the questionnaire you are proposing to distribute. This will help in answering the questions which will be asked. With the DOS prompt showing in the drive/directory holding the SURVEY programs, start the program by typing "survey" (without quotes). Follow by pressing ENTER. You will see the introductory screen and can press any key to proceed to the Main Menu. If you are a first-time user, you should select Option 3 which provides informaton on the use of the program and offers several examples. You will ultimately be returned to the Main Menu. Here, next select Option 2 to transfer to the Action Menu. New users may want to select Option 6 to obtain a screen view of the short demonstration survey, DEMO. You will see a list of the available data files on the directory and can select DEMO.DTA for viewing. When satisfied, return to the Action Menu. You will next need to establish the profile file for your survey. To do this, select Option 5, "Define a New Survey". Since this is a new survey, you will be asked to select a file name for storing the survey data. This must be no longer than eight characters, without any extension. This file name will be used for the profile file with the extension "PRO". The file to hold the data will have the same name with the extension ".DTA". You will be asked for the number and names of any demographic groups, the number of questions, and the number and names of each question choice. Up to nine demographic separations can be made. Remember, however that the length of the report is multiplied by one more than the number of demographic groups. A statement will also be needed for each question to be used as a question heading in the report. Establishing the profile file is a one-time operation for each survey. It can be used for future surveys with the same characteristics. Do not use double quotation marks in any of your entries. These are used by the program to separate entries in the file. You have the option of analyzing the correlation, if any, between the answers to two different questions. If you wish to include such a correlation analysis, you will be asked for the question numbers and choices involved. Be careful in making the profile file. Watch for typo's. The set-up module also asks for the drive or directory which will hold the summary information as it is entered from the responses. If the information is to be kept in the same drive/directory as the SURVEY programs, this will be accomplished by pressing ENTER when asked for the drive/directory for files. 15. When all the set-up questions have been answered, you will be returned to the Main Menu. If you are ready to enter data from some or all of the responses to your questionnaire, you can select Main Menu Option 2. This transfers you to the Action Menu. In the Action Menu, you have the choice of entering some fictitious test response data as previously described in section 7 of "DESIGNING A SURVEY", or you could proceed with entering data from a genuine response. In either case, you would select Option 1, "Start entering data from a NEW survey", since this is a new survey. You will then be asked to identify the file name for storing the survey data. Be sure to enter the SAME NAME as the one you used in setting up the survey profile. You will remember that the profile file had the suffix ".PRO". The data file will have the same name, but with the extension "DTA". With the file established, you will be asked to enter the responses for each question, taking one response sheet at a time. If you are entering test data, remember to re-select Option 1 before entering data from genuine responses in order to erase the test data. When prompted on the screen for data entry from a question response, you will only see the Question Number and Choice Number, not the complete question text. If you are entering data for a multi-choice question, you must follow any number you type with ENTER. In the case of Type B questions which permit any number of choices, enter only those numbers selected, following each by ENTER. When all of the Type B selections have been entered, type the terminating "X". (For consistency type ENTER before typing "X", but if you type "X" immediately after the last entry that entry will still be recorded). Type C and D questions require an entry for EACH possible choice whether or not an entry has been made. Follow each choice number with ENTER or type ENTER alone if a choice is vacant. Fear not; the appropriate directions are included on the screen as you process each question. The directions should be easy to follow. If you make an error in entering data in a multiple choice question, all is not lost. You can re-start the entries for this question in this response by pressing ESC. In addition, if you think you have made an error in entering data in a particular response but have gone by the question involved, you still have the opportunity of re-entering data for all the questions in the most recent response when you come to the end of the last question on the response sheet. At that point, you will also be asked if you 16. wish to continue entering data for the time being. By typing "N" you will return to the Action Menu, and the responses data to date will be stored on your disk. Here you can select Option 6 to print the report to the screen as it currently stands. If you want to take a break, you can exit to DOS from the Action Menu. Your data will be stored, ready for your next session. You will be warned if you try to use Option 1 for an established survey, since this creates a new data file. If you use a file name with Option 1 for a valuable file that already exists, this might wipe out your data. The procedure for adding responses to an existing data file requires the selection of Option 2 in the Action Menu. Do not use Option 1 here. The procedure is otherwise the same as in the case previously described for starting data entry for a new survey. CHANGING AN EXISTING SURVEY In some instances, after a profile file has already been created, you might have a need, either to make editing changes in the text of a Response Summary Statement, or to modify a Report or Choice Title in a question in an EXISTING survey. Alternatively, you might want to add or delete a question in an existing profile file and start over with a new survey. Instead of repeating the detailed effort of creating a completely new profile to accommodate the change, you could use one of the three utility choices in the "Define a New Survey" option (Option 5 of the Action Menu or Option 1 of the Main Menu). These editing options consist of: (a) An option to edit either the Report Title, a Response Summary Statement, or Choice Titles for a question in an existing survey profile file. (b) An option to add one or more questions to an existing survey profile file. (Resulting in a new survey profile for a new survey) (c) An option to delete a question from an existing survey. (Resulting in a new survey profile file for a new survey) The first option could be used, for example, if you decided that the text in one or more of the Response Summary Statements or Choice Titles could be improved or corrected. No change in the existing survey questionnaire would be required since the changes only affect the display of the survey results. 17. The last two options either add or delete an entire question in a survey. Under these conditions new survey profile and data files will be created. They will have a new root name. Because the number of questions has been changed, any data entered in the original survey can not be used wiith the new profile or data file. In other words, you would have to start with a new questionnaire. These last options have application where you want to start a new survey very similar to one used previously, and you want to avoid the trouble of creating a completely new profile file. By using a new file name, you would not change the original profile or data files. If you selected the same name as a previously created survey analysis, the former profile and data files would be written over and would be no longer available. 18.