Creating Drag and Drop Questions in SurveyWriter

SurveyWriter provides the ability to create visually dynamic drag and drop questions in which the respondent makes selections by dragging the desired answer onto a rating scale or numeric ranking.  SurveyWriter's interactive drag and drop feature is available in the following questions:

• Numeric Text Box Question
• Row Question
• Column Question
• Ranking Question

In SurveyWriter's drag and drop interface, the drop objects correspond to the rows in a conventional row question. The drop targets correspond to the columns. This scenario is reversed for column questions. In a ranking question, when a respondent drags a drop object onto target object one, it's similar to manually typing a 1 in a ranking box in a specific row. In a row question, when a respondent drags a drop object onto a target object, it's similar to clicking the option in a specific row. The data appears in the data set the same way.

The basic sequence involved in a drag-and-drop task for the respondent includes:

• Click and hold down the left mouse button  to "grab" the drop object such as a block of text or image
• Drag the drop object to the desired location, typically a scale or ranking box called a drop target in SurveyWriter.
• Drop the drop object onto the target object by releasing the left mouse button.

This document is divided into the following sections:

Before You Begin
Create Drag and Drop Questions
Moving Objects Around in the Drag and Drop Interface

Before You Begin

• When designing the drag and drop question, design it for a standard screen resolutions. If you have too many objects on the screen or spaced them too far to the right, the respondent may not scroll over to see them and have no way to select them. 
• The Next button appears on the bottom of a screen. If you don't make room for it, the drop objects may cover it for questions such as a rating question in which multiple objects may be dragged onto a target on the left-hand side of the screen. In this case, the respondent would not be able to move to the next question in the survey.
• Finally, while drag and drop questions are visually dynamic, they may not always be the best way to ask the respondent a question.  Is a drag and drop question more work for the respondent or less work? Will the drag and drop questions make a survey more visually appealing and more pleasurable to take or do they distract and take away from the content of the survey? Anything that confuses the respondent adds to the drop-out rate. The content of your study and the type of questions overall should dictate how you use them.

Create Drag and Drop Questions

To create a drag and drop question, use the following steps:

For a row or column question, set up your rows and columns as usual.

For a numeric or ranking question, set up your rows as usual. Set up one column using :*: as the delimiter between your column labels. All column labels must appear on the same line:

• Click Modify Options from the Main Question screen.
• Click the Convert to Drag and Drop checkbox.
• Click Build Drag and Drop.

The Drag and Drop window consists of the following areas:

• Drag-n-Drop Object List
• Drop Object
• Drop Target List
• Target Object

Drag-n-Drop Object List

Labels that you enter in the row of a numeric, row, or ranking question appear in this list. Labels entered in the columns of a column question appear as well. To set the parameters for individual objects, left click on a row. The settings for that object appear, and you can change them as needed. After you make the changes, click on the setting label to have it take effect. For example, to change the width, enter a new number for the width and click Width: to have it take effect.

Note: These are the settings for individual drop objects only. You will typically set defaults for all objects using the Click to set defaults button in the Drop Object pane discussed below. See Drop Object for a discussion of the available settings.

Drop Object 

To set the parameters for all objects, change the value entered for a parameter under the heading Drop Object. After you make the changes, click on the setting label, Width:, for example, to have the new setting take effect.

The settings available include:

Drop Target List

Labels that you enter in the column of a numeric, row, or ranking question appear in this list. Labels entered in the rows of a column question appear as well.  To set the parameters for individual objects, left click on a row. The settings for that object appear, and you can change them as needed. After you make the changes, click on the setting label to have it take effect. For example, to change the width, enter a new number for the width and click Width: to have it take effect. Two parameters, value and n drops, appear only in the individual object settings.

Note: These are the settings for individual target objects only. You will typically set defaults for all objects using the Click to set defaults button in the Target Object pane discussed below. See Target Object for a discussion of the available settings.

Target Object 

To set the parameters for all Target objects, change the value entered for a parameter under the heading Target Object. After you make the changes, click on the setting label, Width:, for example, to have the new setting take effect.

The settings available include:

Moving Objects in the Drag and Drop Interface

Initially all objects are aligned from left to right. Click and drag these items to position them as desired. Both drop and target objects are labeled as such and numbered according to how the row and column labels were set up initially. You can also set the drop and target objects in orderly rows using the DD objects per row and Target per row parameters.