Prompt Field

This field is used when multiple question-responses are to appear on one screen. This field contains descriptive text that corresponds to the blank answer field, thereby, affecting or focusing its answer. A respondent's address is best designed and documented as multiple questions, but it is more effective during the interview to have all the components of the address appear as one question on the screen with prompts for each component: street_1; street_2; city, state, country, zip, etc.

This field is used in conjunction with the Display Qtext checkbox and the End Display checkbox.

For example, the design of what appears as a single question that gathers a respondent's address is acutally a series of questions each one gathering one piece of information so that each datum is documented separately.

To design such a question:
First, break up the address into its component parts:

Thus, one concept, the address and four pieces of information would mean that there would be a series of 4 questions. If a second Street? address was needed, there would be 5 questions.

Each question's text (1-4 below) would contain the phrase "What is your address?" for documentation purposes. The four responses to Street?, City?, State?, and Zip? would be 'prompted' individually.

Here's how to set up such a question. Remember, the question text for each question would be "What is you address?". Pay attention to the Display Qtext and End Display checkboxes and the Prompt field.

  1. In the first question, the Display Qtext checkbox would be "checked", the Prompt field would contain the word "Street", without the quotes, and the End Display checkbox would be "un-checked".
  2. In the second question, the Display Qtext checkbox would be "un-checked", the Prompt field would contain the word "City", without the quotes, and the End Display checkbox would be "un-checked".
  3. In the third question, the Display Qtext checkbox would be "un-checked", the Prompt field would contain the word "State", without the quotes, and the End Display checkbox would be "un-checked".
  4. In the fourth question, the Display Qtext checkbox would be "un-checked", the Prompt field would contain the words "Zip Code", without the quotes, and the End Display checkbox would be "checked".

These four (or five) questions will then appear on screen as:

Font color, style, bold, italics, underline, and other formats are available for the question Prompt field. Right-click in the Prompt field (or highlight some text), select font color or other formats to apply to it. Please contact the survey group if you have questions about formats supported by web browsers or PDA.