Load data into Drobots
Created by jdeboel on 10/26/2010 9:01:20 AM

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New Project

Projects are used to manage the various surveys you have in drobots. If you for example have surveys being performed separately among separate groups of people; or if you have an annual survey for which the way results evolve are evaluated every year, these different surveys will belong to one project.

If the data you want to analyse is a standalone survey performed only once, you can choose the same name for the project and questionnaire.

Select the languages in which you want to perform analyses and in which you want to report in a later stage. The selection of these languages is independent from the languages in which the survey was performed. For example, a French organization can perform a survey in Germany (in German), and it has to report to its customer in the UK. The likely choices for languages are French and English.

When you’re done, click submit and your project will appear on the “Select Project” page.

Select Project

On this page you can the project you want to work on. Once you select a project from the drop down box, the selected project is active.

Some extra information on the selected project appears:

• Project Date

• Questionnaire Name

• Languages

Questionnaire

On this page you can create, edit and view the questions in your questionnaire. You browse through your questions by clicking on the buttons on the right.

For each question you can view the question properties:

• Project Name

• Questionnaire Name

• Question Code

• Question Phrase

• Question Type

You cannot change any values here, to do that you have to click on the “Edit” URL on the right. If you’ve entered multiple languages for your questions, you can change between the languages of the current question by selecting the desired language from the drop down box.

The way this part is laid out is that for each question in you have a separate page. On the right of the page you can click on Add New Question to create a new question. If you are using this module, it means that you will be loading already gathered data into drobots. You are basically preparing the platform for the dataset you will be uploading. A new page will load when you click on Add New Question.

Add New Question

You use this page to add new questions to your questionnaire.

Remember, you  only need to do this if you are planning on uploading a dataset with already gathered data!

First, make sure the correct Project and Questionnaire are selected. You see the current selection at the top. You can change the current project by clicking on Project in the left menu.

The process of adding questions to the analyser is pretty straight-forward. First you enter a question code for the question you will be adding. In many cases you’ll already have question codes for your questions from when the questionnaire was first composed, or from the tool you used to gather your data. If you don’t already have question codes, or would like to change them to something more indicative for your question, you should do so now. (Remember to apply the new codes to your dataset file too.)

If you are now  determining your question codes it is a good idea to choose a code that’s indicative for the question you’re asking. You can, if you want, use codes like “Question01”; but we would advise against it. The main reason for this is that in some parts the Survey Analyser,  the question code is used as a short representation of the question in graphs. Using non-indicative question codes will make the whole process a little less intuitive.  The question code stays the same for each question, regardless of the languages you used in your questionnaire, so use a code in the language that’s most or best used in your organization. Question Codes can have up to 255 characters.

Next, you can add the actual Question Phrase which was used in your questionnaire. You see an input field for your question and next to it there’s a drop down box in which you can select the language of the specific question you are now adding, and at the end there’s an URL that says “Add”. The language codes in the drop down box are based on the languages you selected when you were in the process of setting up your project.

In this step it is important to follow the correct workflow. Type in or paste your question, make sure the correct language is selected and click on the little green “Add” link. Only when you’ve clicked the “Add” link will the question be added to your questionnaire. Next, if you’ve got multiple languages for the questions in your questionnaire, add the same question, but in the other language. Again make sure that the correct language is selected and click Add.

The last step is to select the Question type of your question.

There are 4 types of questions which you can choose from:

• Numeric: The respondent has to fill in a number in response to this question. Often these are questions like: “How would you rate … in a score between 1 and 10?”

• Ordinal: The respondent has to choose from a set of categories, but they have a specific order in relation to each other. For these questions you have to select an Answer Category. If you have not added any answer categories yet, click on: “New Answer Category”.

•  Nominal: The respondent has to choose from a set of responses, but they have no mathematical relation to each other. The respondent chooses multiple responses, or the one which suits him best. You can choose this property by selecting “Single” or “Multiple” next to “Response Type”. (Appears after you select Nominal as a question type.) For these questions you have to select an Answer Category. If you have not added any answer categories yet, click on: “New Answer Category"

• Text: The respondent can fill in any response he wants to in an input field. These are often called “Open Questions”.

In the Survey Analyser, the responses to ordinal and numeric responses will sometimes be translated to mathematical scores, in order to perform comparisons and calculations with the results.

Answer Category (Ordinal)

Here you can add Answer Categories for responses that have a mathematical order to them. The reason for this approach, contrary to simply defining answer possibilities for each question, is that in a lot of cases the possible responses are the same throughout the survey. (Which is a good thing as it helps to more consistently perform analyses.)

For the first field, “Answer Category Code”, you take the same approach as was discussed for Question Codes. (see the "Add New Question" section above.) Choose an answer category code which is a short description of the Answer possibilities in this Answer Category.

The “Ordinal Number” is the number the current answer has in the current category ranking. In the example above “I fully disagree” would get “1” as an ordinal number value and “I fully agree” would get “4” as an ordinal number value.
Make sure these values always go from low or bad to high or good; with low being “1” and high being the number of answers in this category.

The Answer Values are the values from which the respondent was able to choose. In the current version of the drobots platform, each answer value is filled in on a new page. In other words, like in the “add question” procedure, you just add your answer option, click on “Add”, and click on Submit to proceed.

Next, you get a view like you’ve seen before in the Question Overview.

When you’re happy with the new category you’ve created, click on “Finish” to go back to the Add New Question Page. You’ll be able to select your new category for this and other questions.

Answer Category (Nominal)

Here you can add Answer Categories for mathematically unrelated responses. The reason for this approach, contrary to simply defining answer possibilities for each question, is that in a lot of cases the possible responses are the same throughout the survey. (Which is a good thing as it helps to more consistently perform analyses.)

For the first field, “Answer Category Code”, you take the same approach as was discussed for Question Codes. (see the "Add New Question" section above.) Choose an answer category code which is a short description of the Answer possibilities in this Answer Category.

The Answer Values are the values from which the respondent was able to choose. In the current version of the drobots platform, each answer value is filled in on a new page. In other words, like in the “add question” procedure, you just add your answer option, click on “Add”, and click on Submit to proceed.

Next, you get a view like you’ve seen before in the Question Overview.

 When you’re happy with the new category you’ve created, click on “Finish” to go back to the Add New Question Page. You’ll be able to select your new category for this and other questions.

Model

Some people do not know how to apply models to a research, what models are, or what (great) benefits they offer. If you want to know more about models, please take a look at the wiki section about [Statistical models]. If you want personalized information or guidance for your project, please contact us at info@kpiware.com.

When setting up the model for your project, it’s best to take a bottom-up approach. This means that you first assign the questions to facets, then you assign facets to concepts and you end with assigning concepts to topics.

If you have not done so already, it is often a good idea to take a print-out of your questionnaire and to create a quick schematic overview of what questions should come together in what facets, and what facets should be part of what concepts etc.

To start, go to the “Questions to Facet” tab.

Questions to Facet

When you look at this page you’ll notice that there is a box with your ordinal questions in it. From this box you will select a number of questions and add them to a facet. First, select the language in which you want the questions and facets to show. This is only to select the language to view for these steps. You do not need to perform the model activation procedure for each language. This is done automatically.

Go ahead and look at the first question from the large box and ask yourself what facet(s) it should be part of. Next, you create the Facet by clicking on the “New” button.

In the new page you first fill in the Facet Code. This should be the facet name or code which defines it best for you. Next you can fill in the Facet Name for the various languages you will be using. Fill in the name, select the language and click “Add”. (If you do not click “Add” before clicking “Create”, the facet name you were filling in will not be added!) When you are done, click on “Create” to go back to the previous page. Now you will be able to select this facet from the drop down box and add questions to it.

In the box next to “Select additional Questions” you can now select a question to add to this facet, and click on “Create” to add it to the facet.

HINT: You can also Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click to select more than one question and add multiple questions to one facet at a time.

When you are done with this facet or you encounter an item that belongs to another facet, just follow the same steps to create a new facet and add the right items to it.

You can add one question to multiple facets, but this will only rarely be necessary and it is seldom advised to do this.

You do not need to assign each question to a facet.

When you’re happy with the facets you’ve created, click on the “Facets to Concept” tab to set up the next level.

Facets to Concept

The procedure to add facets to concepts is exactly the same as the procedure to add questions to facets. Please see the section above for the correct procedure.

Concepts to Topic

The procedure to add concepts to topics is exactly the same as the procedure to add questions to facets. Please see the section above for the correct procedure.

When you’re done adding concepts to the topics in your project, you can view your full model by clicking on the “Model” tab.

Now it’s time for the last step, which is the Data Load.

Data Load

This procedure is split up into two parts. First you create a new survey on the system. Go to the “New Survey” tab.

Here you fill in the Survey Name and the Survey Date. You end by clicking submit.

You are taken back to the “Data Loading” tab and you can now select the survey you just created in the “Survey” drop down box.

Now remains only the last step, which is to click on Browse and navigate to a correctly formatted XLSX file with your data in it. (see below) Click on “Update” to start uploading your data set.

The correct data load file

Currently, the only supported file for data load is a Microsoft Office Excel document with an xlsx extension.

In order to have the drobots platform interpret your data correctly, the file should have a correct markup:

• On the first line you should have the Question Code Labels, which should be exactly the same as those you entered while setting up your questionnaire.

• The first column should be titled IDNR and below it should be casenumbers 1 to [the number of cases in the file].

• Except for open questions, all data under line 2 should be integers. This means only numbers with no decimals. All values should be rounded to 1 and the cell properties should be defined as “numeric values with no decimals”.

• The software only takes into account the first sheet in the datafile, other sheets are ignored.

Notes:

The rows are the specific responses of each individual respondent. The columns are the specific responses to each individual item in the questionnaire. The entries in the uploaded datafile should be compliant with the choices made during Suvey Setup. If you for example ask an ordinal (see above) question to which respondents could answer: "Totally disagree" to "Totally agree", the data in this sheet should be one-on-one correct with the way the survey was set up in the application. (being: Numbers for, and survey definition of the "Totally disagree"-response are represented as a value "1". Numbers for, and survey definition of the "Totally agree"-response are represented as highest value.(e.g. "6")) If these rules aren't applied correctly, an error can occur, or you could be presented with entirely incorrect results! If you for example ask a nominal (see above) question to which respondents could answer: "I take the bus to work", "I go by train", "I walk",… the data in this sheet should be one-on-one correct with the way the survey was set up in the application. The platform automatically assigns a number to the responses entered in Survey Setup, starting at "1". (So the numbers for the response that was first entered in Survey Setup should have the value "1" in the datafile, the response that was entered second should have the value "2", etc.) "Yes" or "No"-response possibilities should be defined as nominal as well. Seeing as auto-numbering starts at 1, "Yes=1, No=0" notation in the datafile will prevent a correct data load.

You can download an xlsx file with correct markup here.

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