Miscellaneous Type Displays

Question Labels

\@ is used to display the question label in the text of the current question.

If the question has a label, the label is displayed (whether or not there is a question number). If there is no label, the CFM#### label will print (the Survox assigned label).

Alternate Text 

You can store different text in the DB file and DEF file from the text that displays on the interviewer’s screen by using the alternate text feature. Text stored in the DB file is used for later reference by the utilities or Mentor when printing reports or making tables, and the DEF file is created by PREPARE or REFORMAT when making variable labels for Mentor or other data processing packages.

\+ Text following a \+ will print on the Survent screen but will not be stored in the DB or DEF files.

This affects all text after the \+ until the next \* or \- (or the end of that text item).

\- No text following a \- will appear on the Survent screen until the next \* or \+ (or the end of that text item). This text will only go to the DB or DEF files.

\* All text following a \* will go to both the Survent screen and the DB and DEF files. This is the default, and is only needed to turn off a preceding \+ or \-.

webSurvent vs webCATI

You can have text that is specifically targeted for webSurvent and webCATI only.

Syntax:

\+? (this is webCATI-only text)
\+! (this is webSurvent-only text)

Special Characters

There are a few special characters that need to be defined using their hexadecimal code or HTML character entity equivalents.

The most common ones are:

  • Space –  
  • Apostrophes – '
  • @ Sign – $#64; (\^40 hexadecimal code)
  • Curly Braces – { for the opening { curly brace and } for the ending } curly brace (\^7B and \^7D hexadecimal codes)

Backslashes

By default, the backslash character is considered a text modifier and it is used as such with back referencing text.

However, there are times when you want the backslash to be displayed as a backslash and not to be used as a modifier. For example, if you are asking for a DOS filename to be entered, the respondent might enter:

Bestsf\big\easy.tr

By default, Survent would treat the \b as bold, \e as end, etc. If you want Survent to back-reference a response and show the backslashes instead of interpreting them, use the “=” character before the reference.

EXAMPLE:

\=:filename     (show the filename)
\=#q1           (show the responses to q1)
\=!datetime!    (show the system variable datetime)
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