Intuitive Questionnaire Programming

You lay out the questions on-screen, exactly the way that they should appear in the survey. With true WYSYWIG (“what you see is what you get”), you do not need any extra preview functions because you can always see how it will look to the user. With functions that are familiar from MS Office programs like PowerPoint, you can position all the elements of a question using your mouse or keyboard or by entering position specifications with pixel accuracy. You can format colors, text sizes and fonts in the same way that you would do in a word processing program. A vast array of individual settings is available for your use. Or you can make it easy for yourself and use the well-thought-out standard settings.

CISdev offers the appropriate question type for every need. These include single response and multiple response questions, ranking questions, single or multiple response matrix questions, questions where responses can be written or drawn on a screen or tablet with a pen, numerical questions, or open questions with a virtual or real keyboard or on-screen keyboard. In addition there is a wide range of question types that can be implemented.

No two respondents are the same. You can generate an individual questionnaire for every respondent, depending on their previous answers, quota cells, or randomized stimulus materials. Response options, questions or whole question blocks can be rotated in order to counteract sequence effects. Through the integration of external lists, you have access to information such as postcode and city categories, product or country lists and such like, which can be inserted into the questionnaire.

You can create individual layout templates for all question types. In the master layout, you define all colors, shapes, fonts, spacing and functions. You can start with a standard template and use it to develop your own master. Thus you can be sure that your questionnaires will always have a uniform appearance. The layout can be adjusted at will for every individual question.

There is no need for the respondents to hit the buttons precisely with their mouse, pen or finger. Instead, they can respond by touching anywhere within the answer text or symbol. This makes survey participation easier and faster.

CIS supports all languages in the UNICODE standard. This also includes languages like Chinese, Arabic or Russian. A questionnaire can be set up in any number of different languages. The choice of language can be either respondent-activated by answering a preliminary question or pre-set in the survey link. Accurate automatic insertion of translations is ensured by means of Excel-generated translation templates.

The import function allows you to import questionnaire components directly from Excel or Word. An interface with Word makes it easy to copy and paste between a Word document and CIS. There is no need to worry about complicated key combinations or long sequences of mouse clicks.

You can integrate multimedia elements like sounds, images and film clips with a mouse click at any point in the questionnaire. The audio recording of verbatim responses opens up further possibilities for the processing of open-ended questions. On Tablet PCs, open-ended responses can also be handwritten or drawn. Open-ended responses can be processed with the CIScode application.

Implement qualitative question types and increase your respondents’ acceptance and staying power with the use of animated question elements. CIS has ca. 20 integrated dynamic modules, and new ones are continuously being introduced.
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You can define quotas in CIS at any level of complexity. Depending on the quota cell, you can tag the status of an interview and define as many different paths through the questionnaire as you wish.

The integrated simulation function allows you to run thousands of interviews with randomly selected responses. By analyzing these interviews you can ensure that your filters and quotas work as intended.

If you need to tell respondents that an answer is obligatory, or that a particular combination of responses is impermissible, or that numerical responses must be within a permitted range, or other requirements for the completeness of responses, you can select from a pre-defined library of useful messages or define your own set of conditions at any level of complexity, which you can re-use as often as you like. The messages are displayed at your specified position in the question text.

For archiving purposes, for checking or for communication with clients or colleagues, you can print out the questionnaire with its layout together with its programming instructions, or in compact form as a Word document. For a parallel paper-&-pencil survey, you can also print the questionnaire with answer boxes.

In addition to the integrated reporting functions contained in CIS, you can export the data in a variety of formats such as ASCII, Excel or SPSS for further processing. For tables, CIS generates labeled data sets and directly executable tabulation instructions for the extremely powerful tabulation software CNT. More on this subject tabulation