WWW Survey Assistant (SA;  http://or.psychology.dal.ca/~wcs/hidden/home.html ) is a powerful tool for developing Web-based surveys.  It assists in the development of the webpages and the CGI for collecting the data.  It even hosts the survey and houses the data for you.

        We're going to use SA to develop a short survey.  In this survey, we're going to collect information relevant to an individual's socioeconomic status (SES).  Social science researchers have used a variety of measures to operationally define SES and these measures are somewhat correlated. These include educational attainment, occupational level, and annual income, just to name a few.  We're going to put together a brief questionnaire that collects several of these measures so we can examine their relationship ourselves.

        Here are the questions we'll be asking along with some information we'll need to set up the questionnaire:

Getting Started:

1) Using your web browser, go the the SA website.  Click on the User Area link and then the Start WWW Survey Assistant Jave Editor button.  If you've already got a login id, enter your information and get logged in.  If you don't already have a login id in SA, just enter a username, password, and your email address and it will automatically make you you.
        All the work you do in SA is saved on their server, but when you log in you'll be able to access the surveys you've previously made.

2) Our survey will be made of 2 pages: 1) The survey page, which includes a welcome, instructions, and the survey items and 2) a Thank You screen.
        The small window that opens shows the list of webpages for the project.  The default list includes a Questionnaire Page, a Reply Page, and an Incomplete Page.  Let's add a new page for our instructions and questionnaire.  Add a new page by clicking the Add Page button at the bottom of the window.  The page that gets added is a Questionnaire Page because it's kind of a universal page for presenting whatever you want.  It should be present at the top of the list.

3) Click the Edit Selected Page button from the bottom of the window.  Change the Page label:  to "Instructions and Survey".  Then, from the menu bar, click 'Add Other' and then 'Text/HTML'.  When 'Text/HTML' gets added to the list of events, double-click it.  Now, we have a window for adding our instructions.  If you're proficient in HTML, you can use that to make the instructions look snazy, or you can write the instructions in a Webpage editor (e.g., Netscape Composer, Dreamweaver) and then copy and paste the source code into this window.
        For our purposes here, let's just enter some plain tex with just a little HTML.  Type this text into the window.
 

4) When you have that entered, Click the OK button.

Addition Survey Questions:

5) Now we need to add our questions.  Make sure you are in the Instructions and Survey window.  The only item in the list should be the text/HTML you just added.  From the menu bar, click 'Add Survey Question', go to 'Multiple Choice', and then click 'Without Pictures'. NOTE:  We don't want to add a Test Question because those expect a correct answer to the question.
        Double-click the new item labeled Survey Question.  In the box for Enter Question Text, enter "What is your sex?".  Click the down-arrow for the list of Select Question Type: and then select Responses in a Column.
        Click the Add Response button.  In the new window that opens, erase the text "Enter a Response", replace it with "Male", and then click OK.  Click the Add Response button again and repeat the procedure to add "Female" as a response option.  In the Responses list, you should have the options of Male and Female.
        Click the Edit Reply Options... button at the bottom of the window.  This is where we see the variable name assigned to the question.  The variable name is used to designate the responses to this question in the data file.  As you can see, the variable name assigned is "Q1".  SA automatically assigns these generic variable names, and though they're functional, they aren't really informative.  Change the Variable Name to "Sex" and then click OK.
        Click OK at the bottom of the Edit Survey Question... window and you should see the question is added to your list.

6) Try this one on your own.  Using the information in the table above, go ahead and add the next question (i.e., about education level).

7) After you've added the question about educational attainment, we need to add a textbox question.  Click Add Survey Question, go to Fill in the Blank, and click One Line.  Double-click Fill in the Blank Survey Question from the list of questions.  In the box for Enter Question Text:, enter "What is your occupation?".
        We can adjust a) the size of the text box [Text Field Width] and b) the maximum number of characteristcs the answer can be [Maximum String Length].  The default for both fields is 30 characters.  Let's keep that for the Text Field Width, but increase the Maximum String Length to 50.  This sets the size of the response window to 30 characters, but actually lets someone type up to 50 characters.
        In the 'Default Response' box, erase the text "Default Response" and leave the box blank.
        Click the OK button when you're done.

8)  Ok, referring to the table of questions above, enter the rest of the questions.

Saving your Work:

9) We'll continue in just a second, but we should save our work.  From the main menu, click File and then Update Survey.  If will ask you to name your survey, so let's all it "Brief SES Survey".  Then click OK.
        SA will then open a copy of the survey in a new browser window.  You should see something that looks like (the questions are a little hard to read, but you can see the format):
 
 

Any formating changes you want to make can be made with HTML.

10)   As you scroll down the survey, one thing you might notice is the questions are a little smushed together.  SA can add the questions, but to do a little more formating you need to add some HTML.  Let's put in a space between questions 3 and 4.

     Try this:  In SA, open the page entitled 'SES questions'.  From the menu bar, select 'Add Other' and then click 'Text/HTML'.  Double-click on the 'Text/HTML' option that appears in the list and in the text window that opens up, type the following: "<br>".  This HTML causes a line break in the text.

     Also, in the top of the window, change the Label: to "Add Space". Click 'OK' when your done.  If you highlight the new Add Space line and then push the up and down areas on the keyboard, you can position the new text between the appropriate questions.  When you close the page and  'Update Survey', you can see the formating change to the survey.

11)  Now we need to make the Thank You page.  Double-click the Questionnaire page you made and the Edit Questionnaire Page will open.  Change the Page Label to "Thank You".  Click 'Add Other' and add a line for some HTML.  Double-click that new line and enter the following text:

<center><font size=+1>Thanks for completing the survey!</font></center>

    This single line of HTML contains the statement we want to present, the code to center the line on the computer screen, and an increase in font size.  Click 'OK' when you're done and then close the Edit page.  Then, update your survey and take a look.

    You can take a look a the final survey here: 

        http://or.psychology.dal.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~wcs/SAprojects/M_Weeks/SES_example.pl

Looking at the Data:

12) Now, let's take a look at the data.  If you haven't already done so, complete your survey and make sure to click the 'Press to Submit' button.
        Then, return to the Licensed User Area for WWW Survey Assistant and click Access your Survey Data.  After entering your User Name and Password, you should get a list of *.log files from any of your surveys which have collected data.  Clicking on the Brief SES Survey.log option should open a window with strings of data that look something like this:
 
 

The data is saved in a comma deliniated format.  Each line represents the information gathered from one submission.  Thus, each line should represent a different respondent.      Each piece of information is enclosed by commas and parentheses.  The first 5 entries on each line are largely administrative information.  For example, the forth piece of information is the URL for the survey that was completed and the fifth piece of information is the date and time the survey was completed.        After that, you have the responses that were collected.  Each question is actually represented by 3 pieces of information (always represented in the same order):  1) the variable name (e.g., "Sex"), 2) the label used for the response (e.g., "Male"), and 3) the number of the option (e.g., "1", because "Male" was the first response option for that question).       The data file can be downed and opened in a spreadsheet program for conversion or analysis.