Creating Online Surveys Using FrontPage 2002

Building an Interactive Survey Form - Part One

Step 7: In this next step, I'll choose the input prompt Any of Several Options, and add the first question of the IT Specialist Survey:

Are You a Microsoft Certified Professional or Microsoft Office User Specialist? If not, what other IT certifications do you hold if any?

This question looks tricky on the face of it, but it can be handled adequately with the aid of additional text surrounding the actual input field on the form. I'll refrain from placing a check mark in the option to place the answers in multiple columns, since I am not concerned with the form's length. If you have space considerations you might want to use this option. I have also relabeled the default base name of Options to the more descriptive name, MCPOption, to aid in identification of this group variable when using the confirmation form and Database Results Wizard explained later in this tutorial.

Note: Click here to view the entire list of questions for the survey that was submitted by our client.

Figure 6 Configuring the first question for our survey form.

Step 8: Next up is question number two, which contains an up to date list of all the Microsoft certifications currently available. Since many MCPs have more than one type of Microsoft certification, we'll choose the input prompt Any of Several Options to allow the participant to easily check off which credentials they have. For the input field group label, I'll name it MCPMOUScerts to make it relevant. Once done, click the Next button to add the next question on the survey.

Step 9: Next, I create an integer or number prompt (Figure 7) for question number three which relates to the length of time the survey participant has been a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). The length of time will be indicated in years on the form itself as a text suffix to the input field. Here I can enter or cut and paste the actual question itself for the input field. By cutting and pasting, I also make sure that I have entered the question precisely as the client requested it to be put on the form. In addition, by creating an integer field instead of simple string field, we can compute the median work experience of MCPs later on for a survey findings report.

Figure 7 Creating an integer prompt for the survey form.

I'll click the Next button to proceed to the next screen relating to this number or integer based prompt. This takes me to an interim screen that allows me to set the maximum length for the field. I make it one integer, since the MCP and MOUS certification programs have existed for less than ten years. The interim dialog box also prompts me for a variable name or field label for this prompt. I'll use mcpworkyears to denote the length of time the individual has been an MCP.

I click Next once more after completing the prior process, to return to the Add Input Type dialog box (Figure 5) to add more questions to the survey form.

Step 10: Next, I will use the predefined input prompt Range shown in Figure 8 to input the MCP ratings question (survey question number four) in the FrontPage survey form. This is a two-part input type or prompt and allows me to customize the scaling question. That is, I can select from a simple question that allows the participant to select a radio button to rate the question on a scale of one to five. Or, I can use an alternative set of questions, such as bad, poor, fair, etc. or use the sliding scale "disagree strongly to agree strongly". 

Figure 8 Defining a input prompt for a ratings scale.

In addition, the wizard allows me to set the default input prompt or setting at midpoint in the scale, and use a drop-down menu instead of the default radio buttons. Finally, I add the input prompt's variable name or label mcpscale in the field provided to make it meaningful for internal reporting purposes. As a reminder, you must supply a variable label for each question that you develop, except on certain occasions where the wizard provides a default name, which you can always override. The variable label or name is used for confirmation forms and database driven forms.

Once I've made my selections, I click Next to return to the Add Input Type dialog box to create the next question.

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