Data Dictionary

The Data Dictionary tab of the survey page shows all of the variables in the survey, along with variable data types, display types, descriptions and scales.

At the top of the data dictionary is a list of collections. Click any collection to see the list of variables belonging to that collection. Click ALL to see all of the variables in the survey.

The data dictionary displays the following items:

• Variable Name – The name of the question/variable as it appears in the Survey Designer, in queries and data downloads.
• Data Type – The type of data collected for this question/variable.
• Display Type – The type of HTML control used to display this question in the survey.
• Description – A description of the question. If the person designing the survey did not supply a description for a question, then question prompt appears as the description.
• Scale – If the question has a scale, the scale values and labels appear in a table below the question description.

These variables are created automatically with every survey and are found in the Data Dictionary.  They can be queried and downloaded as any other variable.

DATSTAT.SUBMISSIONID – The unique id of this data submission. No other submission on this or any other survey shares this submission id.

DATSTAT.SESSIONID – How is this calculated?  The session id assigned by the web server to this participant’s login session.

DATSTAT.VERSION – The version of the survey that the participant submitted. A survey gets a new version number each time it is published. This number may be important in some cases. For example, if a participant submitted version 2 of a survey, you know that the participant did not see any of the edits or new questions that appeared on version 3 of the survey.

DATSTAT.LOCALE – This is the locale setting on the participant’s computer. This may not always be available. The locale setting determines, among other things, what language the computer uses, and how it formats dates and times. Microsoft provides more information about locales in its Locales & Languages page (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/faqs/Locales.mspx).

DATSTAT.LANGUAGE – This variable indicates that the survey was in English

DATSTAT.BROWSER – This is the browser the participant used to enter data. This is actually the text of the browser’s “user agent” string.

DATSTAT.STARTDATETIME – This variable indicates the date and time the survey the participant first logged on to begin the survey.  The date and time the participant began entering data.

DATSTAT.ENDTIME – This indicates the time the survey was submitted.  The date and time the participant finished entering data.

DATSTAT.ELAPSEDTIME – This indicates the time (in minutes) the participant took taking the survey.  The total number of minutes it took the participant to finish entering data. Note that this cannot always be a reliable figure. If a participant spends 10 minutes answering questions, then takes an hour break for lunch, then spends another 10 minutes completing the survey, this field will show 80 minutes, even though only 20 minutes of that time was spend answering questions.

DATSTAT.SUBMISSIONSTATUS – This indicates the submission status of the participant’s survey (1 = completed; 2 = partially completed; 4 = not started; 5=terminated

This field contains one of three values:

• 1 indicates the participant completed the survey
• 2 indicates the participant started the survey but did not submit a complete survey.
• 4 indicates that the participant did not start the survey
• 5 indicates that the participant was terminated and did not complete

DATSTAT.LOGINCOUNT – This indicates the number of times the participant logged into the online survey (?)

This shows the number of times the participant logged in to this particular survey

DATSTAT.JAVASCRIPT – A value of 1 indicates that the participant’s browser had JavaScript enabled. A value of 0 indicates that JavaScript was disabled or not supported in the participant’s browser.

DATSTAT.TIMEPERIOD – This shows the time period during which the survey was submitted. Time periods apply primarily to longitudinal surveys (those where a single participant submits the survey more than once over time). Time period names are arbitrary (e.g. “P1” or “Spring 2008”) and are set at the time of publication by the user who publishes the survey. If you publish your survey under multiple time periods, you can filter your survey results by time period when querying the data.

DATSTAT.PCTCOMPLETE – The percentage of questions that the participant completed. If the survey includes a progress bar, this is the figure that drives the progress bar. For incomplete (a.k.a. “partial”) submissions, this shows how far the participant progressed.

DATSTAT.LOGINDATETIME – This shows date and time when this participant last logged in. It will be the same as

DATSTAT.UPLOADDATETIME – The date and time if and when this submission was uploaded

DATASTAT.UPLOADUSER – The name of the user that uploaded this submission

DATSTAT.UPLOADTYPE – The type of upload 1 = Remote Data Collection; 2 – Imported with Data Import

DATSTAT.IMPORTDATETIME – The date and time this submission was imported. This applies only to surveys that were imported into Illume from another application or data source. This value will be empty if the participant submitted his or her survey directly via a web browser, which is the case with all of your submissions.

DATSTAT.NUMPRESENTED – This indicates the number of items the participant was presented while logged into the survey

The number of questions presented to the participant. Show-if conditions and conditional jumps can cause this number to be lower than the total number of questions in the survey for a specific participant.

DATSTAT.NUMANSWERED – This indicates the number of items answered by the participant, including the “I choose not to answer” option

DATSTAT.NUMUNANSWERED – Number of questions unanswered by this participant

DATSTAT.PCTUNANSWERED – This indicates the percent of items left unanswered by the participant

The percentage of questions left unanswered by this participant. This number does not include items that were never presented to the specific participant because of show-if conditions or jumps.

DATSTAT.SITE – Participant site a the time when this survey was started

DATSTAT.INTERVIEWER – User that interviewed the participant

DATSTAT.RMSSURVEY – RMS Survey

DATSTAT.RMSMILESTONE – RMS Milestone

DATSTAT.RMSSTUDYARM – RMS Study ARM

DATSTAT.RMSINSTANCE – RMS Instance in the Milestone

DATSTAT.RMSSTUDY – RMS Study

This can be done by viewing the data dictionary. In the Survey Designer select Tools Review Data Dictionary… The variable count is located at the top of the page. In the Data Manager, first select the survey and then select the Data Dictionary tab. Again the variable count is located at the top of the page.

Custom Variables are computed variables that allow for recoded questions to be quickly created. This functionality is found in the Data Dictionary Tab of a Published or Test Published survey.

The following points are worth noting for Custom Variables:

1. Once created, Custom Variables are available for use in Queries and Reports.
2. Only Power Analysts and Power Users have the ability to add, modify, or delete Custom Variables
3. Custom Variables are not permitted to reference other Custom Variables
4. A Custom Variable created in a Test Published survey is only available for the Test Published survey. You will
5. have to create the same variable for the Published Survey.
6. Custom Variables are saved in the database and are not part of the survey. For example, a cloned survey will not contain the Custom Variables that were a part of the original survey.
7. Custom Variables are not objects that can be copied and pasted.
8. When fields referenced by a Custom Variable are modified, the Custom Variable’s value will also vary

Examples of Custom Variables

An example of a Custom Variable would be the creating of a variable that provided the “top 3”, “bottom 3”, and the middle. So if you have a question, Q1, with a scale from 1 through 10, you might want to recode the question into the “bottom 3”, “top 3”, and middle 4. You could do this by defining the following criteria “Q1 <= 3”, “Q3 = 7”, and “Q3 3 AND Q3 < 7” respectfully.

Another example would be where there is a question, Q1, that is an open-ended AGE question and you want to define a new question that breaks this data out into the following intervals: those < 18, between 18 and 35, between 36 and 65, 65. A variable could be defined that would define each of these separate intervals or scale values. Each scale value would be assigned a different criteria “Q1 < 18”, “Q1 = 18 AND Q1 <= 35”, “Q1 35 AND Q1 <=65”, and “Q1 65”.

Multi-Select Custom Variables

To a user editing and running queries in the DataManager, Multi-Select variables look and feel like “Check All that Apply” variables.

1. You must be logged into the Data Manager as either a Power User or Power Analyst.
2. Select the survey that will have the Custom Variables.
3. Click on the Data Dictionary tab.
4. Click the Add/Edit Custom Variables button
5. Select the Multi-select variable link

6. Provide a Name and Description for the Multi-Select Custom Variable

NOTE: The Name for the Variables follow the same convention as the standard variables. They must start with a letter, and may contain letters, numbers, underscores (_) and hyphens (-). The name must be between 2-30 characters in length.

7. Click Add New Scale Item
8. Enter a Label for the Scale Value
9. Click Add Filter to select the first filter used in this Scale Item
10. Decide on the Logic used for the Filters
11. Click Done
12. Continue adding Scale Items if desired
13. You will be presented with a list of your Scale Items

14. Click Done
15. You will see your new Custom Variable listed in the Existing Variables
16. Click Done or Add another variable

Single-Select Custom Variables

To a user editing and running queries in the DataManager, Single-Select Custom variables look and feel like “Select One” variables.

1. You must be logged into the Data Manager as either a Power User or Power Analyst.
2. Select the survey that will have the Custom Variables.
3. Click on the Data Dictionary tab.
4. Click the Add/Edit Custom Variables button
5. Select the Single-select variable link
6. Provide a Name and Description for the Single-Select Custom Variable

NOTE: The Name for the Variables follow the same convention as the standard variables. They must start with a letter, and may contain letters, numbers, underscores (_) and hyphens (-). The name must be between 2-30 characters in length.

7. Enter a default value if desired that will be used if the expression cannot be evaluated.
8. Click Add New Scale Item
9. Enter the Value and Label for this Scale Item
10. Click Add Filter to select the first filter used in this Scale Item
11. Continue until you have finished selecting your Filters
12. Decide on the Logic used for the Filters
13. Click Done
14. If Desired continue adding Scale Items

NOTE: You cannot delete a scale item until you have 2 or more scale items added. Once you do, the Delete link will appear next to every scale item.

15. Click Done when you are finished adding Scale Items
16. You will see your new Custom Variable listed in the Existing Variables
17. Click Done or Add another variable

Calculated Custom Variables

Creating a Calculated Custom Variable is similar to creating a Calculation in the DatStat Designer Client. However a major difference is that Calculated Custom Variables are written using Transact-SQL versus JScript.NET for survey calculations.

1. You must be logged into the Data Manager as either a Power User or Power Analyst.
2. Select the survey that will have the Custom Variables.
3. Click on the Data Dictionary tab.
4. Click the Add/Edit Custom Variables button
5. Select the Calculated variable link

6. Provide a Name and Description for the Calculated Custom Variable

NOTE: The Name for the Variables follow the same convention as the standard variables. They must start with a letter, and may contain letters, numbers, underscores (_) and hyphens (-). The name must be between 2-30 characters in length.

7. Select the Data Type for the Variable
8. Enter the Transact-SQL Expression and/or select the Variables to insert. This expression is different from a calculation in that calculations use Jscript.NET whereas Calculated Custom Variables use Microsoft’s Transactional-SQL language. A link to this reference is provided on the calculated custom variables screen. NOTE: You may select one Variable at a time to insert into your expression. You will see the variables in Green text that match the Data Type you selected. Once you select the Variable, Click Append to expression to have it inserted into your calculation.
9. Click Done when you have completed your calculation.

Use the Edit or Delete links to modify any Custom Variable you have created.