Dates, Study and Employee Information Related
These Date, Study, and Employee Information SPECIAL statements keep track of various types of system dates, study specific information, and employee information within the data file.
Valid Subtypes
- Employee_File_Info
- Julian_Date_Time
- Readable_Date_Time
- Study_Information
EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO
Shortform: SPC,EMPLOYEEINFO
This command stores information about the interviewer from the employee information file.
The syntax for the SPECIAL,EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO question type is:
!SPECIAL,EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO,start column,length
What you get depends on the starting location and length you specify.
The available information is:
| Starting Location | Information |
| 1-4 | Interviewer ID |
| 5 | Blank |
| 6-30 | Interviewer Name |
| 31 | Blank |
| 32-40 | Special types (1-9) |
| 41 | Blank |
| 42-45 | B=can Abort or Break in an interview and can self-change change studies. C=Change mode. Interviewer can self-change studies. D=Debug mode. Overrides interviewer controls, allows GOTO forwards and backwards, can Abort, Break in an interview and can self-change studies. E=Echocats mode. Answers are flagged or “echoed” in terminal mode. L=do interviewer logging and save at end of interview. N= Interviewer has no capabilities and cannot view prior interviews. Q=Debugging log mode. Interviewer log file is saved after every question. T=Training mode. Can practice and test interviews, but no data is saved. |
| 46-240 | User-supplied employee information |
EXAMPLE:
{ GET_NAME_TYPES:
!SPECIAL,EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO,6,35 }
This example will get you 35 columns of information starting in column 6 (Interviewer name and special types).
EXAMPLE:
{ GET_INTERVIEWER_MODE:
!SPECIAL,EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO,42,4 }
will return the interviewing modes in use RIGHT NOW; so, for instance, if you sign on to an interview in TRAINING mode, you will see a “T” in column 42-45 even though there is no “T” in the employee.xxx file, columns 42-45.
NOTE: This is the same layout as in the Employee information file (see Employee Information File). If the interviewer is a special type, regardless of how it’s set, a 1 will be in position 32 (as noted above) indicates that they are special type 1, a 2 if they are special type 2, etc. If you are using the “LONG_EMPLOYEE_ID_LOCATION” parmfile parameter, the long name must be specified in columns 46-240, and will only be recorded in the data if you specify a !SPECIAL, EMPLOYEE_FILE_INFO statement to store it.
JULIAN_DATE_TIME
Shortform: SPC,JULIANDATETIME
This puts the date and time from the system into the data in the format: YYYYMMDDHHMMSSXJJJ (18 characters), which is year, month, day, hour, minute, second, day of week, and Julian date.
For instance, ‘201508041320542216’ would be returned for August 4, 2015 at 1:20:54 P.M., which is a Tuesday and the 216th day of the year. For the days of the week Sunday is 7, Monday is 1,Tuesday is 2, Wednesday is 3, Thursday is 4, Friday is 5, and Saturday is 6. The default width is 18 columns; you may specify less if you want to see less information.
EXAMPLE:
{ QDATE:
!SPECIAL,JULIAN_DATE_TIME }
This would put the current date and time from the system into the data.
There are two options to control the Julian date gathered in a short and long format.
The syntax is:
!SPECIAL,JULIAN_DATE_TIME,<suboption>
Valid SubOptions
- LONG – Records entire date and time
- Shortform: SPC,JULIANDATETIME,LONG
- This is the default date format
- SHORT – Records the date in the format MMDDYY so it returns 16 characters in the format “MMDDYYHHMMSSXJJJ
- Shortform: SPC,JULIANDATETIME,SHORT
After storing the entire string, you can use a column offset to reference specific columns in this data field.
EXAMPLE:
{ JDATE:
!IF [QDATE+15.3] > 90
!GOTO, ZLABEL }
The example above will cause the program to skip to the label ZLABEL if today’s Julian Date (absolute day of the year) is higher than 90. The specific syntax on the !IF means count over fifteen columns from the beginning of the data field identified as QDATE and look at the number in the next 3 columns.
READABLE_DATE_TIME
Shortform: SPC,DATETIME
This command enters the date and time of the interview in the text format “DDD MMM DD YYYY HH:MM xx”; for example, “TUE AUG 04 2015 3:38 PM”. The default width is 24 columns (19 characters and 5 blank spaces); but you may specify less to get less information.
NOTE: Time is machine time when the SPECIAL,READABLE_DATE_TIME is executed.
STUDY_INFORMATION
Shortform: SPC,STUDYINFO
This SPECIAL statement puts the following study-specific information in the data:
| Starting Position | Number of Characters | Information | Where Information is Taken From |
| 01 | 04 | Interviewer ID | Employee Info File/Login |
| 05 | 01 | Interviewing Mode | Survox system (A=standalone B=under boss or S=Server) |
| 06 | 10 | Date/Time (MMDDYYHHMM) | Local Operating System |
| 16 | 01 | Blank | |
| 17 | 02 | Dialer # or Site Code | Dialer # or ?? if manual dialing. Standalone Windows returns site code |
| 19 | 01 | Short Language | Current Language in Effect (1 Character Only) |
| 20 | 05 | Station Number or LDEV | TTYINFO file or DOS CFG file |
| 25 | 01 | Blank | |
| 26 | 08 | Study Name | QFF file or DOS CFG file |
| 34 | 01 | Blank | |
| 35 | 09 | Special Interviewer Types | Employee Info File or Login |
| 44 | 01 | Blank | |
| 45 | 02 | Process Time Zone | TTYINFO File |
| 47 | 01 | Blank | |
| 48 | 02 | Terminal Type | TTYINFO File (HP,UNIX only) |
| 50 | 01 | Blank | |
| 51 | 04 | Phone Extension | TTYINFO File |
| 55 | 01 | Blank | |
| 56 | 10 | Qff File Compile Time Stamp (YYMMDDHHMM) | QFF File |
| 66 | 02 | Blank | |
| 68 | 03 | Number of Backups | # of Times backed up in Survent |
| 71 | 01 | Blank | |
| 72 | 03 | Maximum Consecutive Backups | Max. # of consecutive questionnaire backups |
| 75 | 01 | Blank | |
| 76 | 20 | TTY File Device Info | TTYINFO file columns 53-72 |
| 96 | 01 | Blank | |
| 97 | 12 | 4-digit Year Date/Time (YYYYHHMMDDHHMM) | Local Operation System |
| 109 | 01 | Blank | |
| 110 | 02 | 2-Character Language Code | Current Language in Effect |
| 113 | 30 | Study code up to 30 characters | |
| 143 | 02 | Blank | |
| 145 | 20 | First 10 language codes used |
The maximum length of !SPECIAL,STUDY_INFORMATION statement is 164.
The Interviewing mode can be “A” for standalone interviewing, “B” if running under a supervisor and “S” if running under the Survox server without a supervisor. The language can be whatever is specified in the LANGUAGE= parameter in the study header.
Special interviewer types may be numbers from 0 to 9, and are listed in position, starting in column 35. Time zones may be 01-24 (U.S. mainland time zones are 05-08).
The phone extension will be “0000” unless you are using a dialer which uses the extensions.
The terminal types (columns 48-49) are:
- 01 ANSI
- 02 Dialup
- 03 Unknown
- 04 Vt 220
- 05 Wyse 50
- 06 Wyse 150
- 07 Wyse 85
- 08 IBM 3151
- 09 HP
- 11 Adds
- 14 HP 700/96
- 15 HP 700/98
- 16 Wyse 60
- 17 Vt100
- 18 Ansi25
- 20 At385
- 22 Linux
- 23 Xterm
The syntax for the SPECIAL, STUDY_INFORMATION question type:
!SPECIAL,STUDY_INFORMATION,startcol,length
The default width is 164 (all of the above information), but a width is required either by using the length parameter above or specified on the question label line.
EXAMPLE:
{ STUDYINFO:
!SPECIAL,STUDY_INFORMATION }
This example will give you all columns of the information.
EXAMPLE:
{ STUDYINFO:
!SPECIAL,STUDY_INFORMATION,1,35 }
This example will return information from column 1 for a length of 35 from the study information.