Why you should migrate from !category questions to !field questions

The use of !category questions is as outdated as punch cards. The notion of replicating punch data in a fully electronic format has been a great feature and we maintain the capabilities for backwards compatibility. But as software evolves, consider evaluating your use of !CATEGORY questions. Several years and software versions ago these questions played an important role. They used less disk space by using binary punches. Also, some older tabulation packages only read binary data.

Fast forward to today and there really is not a need to use them any longer. Why? See the list below.

11 Reasons to Migrate from !CATEGORY questions to !FIELD questions
1) Disk space is no longer an issue. On newer servers today you can store tons of data.
2) TR files can be larger – up to 200,000 for a case length.
3) Data that is stored as binary punches are much harder to understand than using response codes. Understanding punch data is not is easy to do.
4) It is much easier to make mistakes in the data when the data are stored as binary punches.
5) Binary response codes and response values may not match, which makes errors easier and data checks harder.
6) When using !CATEGORY questions, the order of mention is not kept. This is extremely important today especially in the web world.
7) If the binary data needs to be exported to ASCII at any time, it MUST be spread and reformatted first.
8) Coding of !CATEGORY questions can get much more complicated depending on what the end result is, especially if desired punches do not match the code list.
9) Any new enhancements will only be added to !FIELD questions and not !CATEGORY questions.
10) The size of the response list can be quite large and easier to handle with response codes without having to worry about what column and punch a code is in.
11) It’s easier to train new programmers using !FIELD questions.