Esportazioni statistiche
Six downloads: Excel or CSV, SPSS, Stata, the codebook and the computed metrics, and the choices the export dialog offers.
Answers become useful once they are out of the platform and inside the tool the analysis happens in. Forms offers six downloads, all from the Records tab: an Excel workbook or a CSV file of the responses, an SPSS file, a Stata file, a codebook and a metrics file. Each needs permission to view forms, and each is written to your workspace activity log.
The Excel and CSV download
Export data opens a dialog that asks how you want the table: Excel or CSV; columns named by variable name or by the full question text; choice answers as their labels or as their coded values; and a repeating section either with each entry's answers side by side where the section sits in the form, or as a separate table for each repeating section with one row per entry, linked by Response ID.
The Excel workbook's header row is styled and frozen so that it stays in view as you scroll. The CSV carries a byte order mark, which is what makes Arabic answers open correctly in Excel rather than as strings of question marks. With separate tables for repeating sections, the CSV download is a ZIP holding one file per table.
The dialog also decides what is included. Fields from all deployed versions is on unless you switch it off; it changes only which columns appear, every response is always included, and each row says which version of the form it was filled in. Notes are left out unless you ask, because a note records nothing. Why an answer is blank adds a column after each answer saying whether it was skipped by the form's rules, shown and left blank, or not asked in the version that was filled. Set aside responses are left out unless you include them; included, they carry a response_state column, and in Excel a sheet of their own.
Every download is made from the data as it is at that moment, so two downloads a week apart need not match.
SPSS, Stata e il file delle metriche
Two of the downloads are written for statistics packages. They follow the choices made in the export dialog, so repeating sections, versions and the blank column come out the same way.
Il primo è pensato per SPSS e ha l'estensione .sav
In it, a choice answer is stored as a number with value labels attached, so the package shows you the choice text rather than the code behind it. Yes and No become 1 and 0, labelled. A skipped answer is written as system missing rather than as a blank or a zero, which keeps it out of your averages. A number question is a numeric column even when nobody has answered it yet. Each column label holds the question text, cut where needed to the 255 bytes SPSS allows.
Il secondo è pensato per Stata e ha l'estensione .dta
It has the same columns, written in the format Stata 14 and later read. Choice answers carry value labels here too. Labels are cut to Stata's limits, 79 characters and 320 bytes, because a longer label produces a file Stata will not open.
Un file delle metriche, anch'esso in CSV, contiene i valori calcolati anziché le risposte grezze: i punteggi e i valori di incremento che la piattaforma ha calcolato per ciascuna risposta.
Come vengono denominate le colonne
In the SPSS file, the Stata file and the codebook, each column is named after the variable name you gave the question, cut to 32 characters where it is longer. Names are kept unique without regard to letter case, and if one has to change to stay unique, the file's notes say so.
The codebook uses the same names, so the data file and the codebook read side by side.
Il codebook
The codebook is a CSV with one row per question, and it is the document you hand to a researcher along with the data. Each row gives the variable name, the question's order in the form, the question text, the question type, whether the question was required, its section, the valid values, the value labels, any notes and the codes used for missing values. The question text and the value labels are given in English and Arabic, and in every other language the form's content is written in.
Segue le convenzioni di etichettatura previste dal pacchetto R haven, così un codebook e un file di dati possono essere letti insieme in R senza che nessuno debba riscriverli a mano.
Aprire i file
The SPSS and Stata files are checked by reading them back with independent readers, which confirms their columns, types and labels. That check does not open them inside SPSS or Stata themselves.
Open the codebook beside the data and a researcher who has never seen your form can tell what every column holds.
Se le librerie che la piattaforma utilizza per scrivere questi due formati non sono disponibili, il download segnala che manca una dipendenza anziché fornirle un file solo apparentemente corretto.