Getting Started with SSI Web v3 A 45-Minute Hands-On Tour What is SSI Web? SSI Web is a software system for creating Web-based questionnaires. These questionnaires can include standard survey questions, such as What is your primary occupation? or How many people live in your household?. Other SSI Web studies may include specialized research techniques such as conjoint (trade-off) analysis, including Choice- Based Conjoint (CBC/Web) and Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA/Web). The standard survey questions and conjoint questions are developed using the same SSI Web system, and are integrated within the same continuous survey. ACA/Web and CBC/Web are just specialized components within the SSI Web system. SSI Web stands for Sawtooth Software Incorporated and Web refers to the ability to create Webbased surveys. This 45-minute tour focuses on general surveys rather than conjoint analysis. Even if your primary intent is to use SSI Web for its conjoint capabilities, you should find this tour useful, as we cover many topics that are essential to all SSI Web surveys, whether including conjoint questions or not. The Big Picture The SSI Web system should be installed onto your own desktop computer. (You can install a demo version of SSI Web from www.sawtoothsoftware.com/trial.shtml ). SSI Web is a Windows-based program that provides a simple point-and-click interface for writing questionnaires and previewing/testing them all on your own computer. For example, you can make sure that any skip patterns, randomizations, and question verification (such as whether respondents filled out all the required questions on a page) are working properly using just your SSI Web system on your desktop PC. You do not need to install the full SSI Web system on the Web Server. After you finish writing your questionnaire on your desktop, you just need to move 1
certain files (e.g. questionnaire files, Perl program files) up to the Web Server in a process we describe in the on-line documentation that comes with SSI Web. This Web Server can be your own company s server, or a server that you rent from a third party provider, such as an ISP (Internet Service Provider). By the way, we don t charge you any per-project or per-respondent interviewing fees if you use your own or a rented server. You are free to interview as many people (who browse/connect to the Web Server) and conduct as many projects as you like. You can use any number of inexpensive FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software programs to copy the needed files from your local computer to the Web Server. We won t go into how to set up If you don t want to deal with hosting issues or Web Server set-up, you can email your project files to us and we can host your survey. Fees start as low as $250 per survey. your project on a web server in this 45-minute tour. If you want to read more about how this is done, within the SSI Web system, click on Help + Contents + General Web Interviewing (CiW) Help + Survey Installation on Web Server. Alternatively, visit http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/ssiwebworks.shtml. Starting a New SSI Web Study From this point on, we ll assume you have installed the SSI Web system on your computer. (You can install a demo version of SSI Web at www.sawtoothsoftware.com/trial.shtml ). Start the SSI Web system by clicking Start + Programs + Sawtooth Software + Sawtooth Software SSI Web (or Sawtooth Software SSI Web Demo). If you are starting the system for the first time, SSI Web will ask you if you want to start a new study. For the time being, you can just click Cancel, so we can show you the main menu: 2
The first thing you should know is that while at any screen in SSI Web, you can press F1 to receive help related to the items on that screen. You can also receive help by clicking the Help menu at the upper-right of the screen and then by choosing Contents or alternatively by clicking the? button on the toolbar. To begin a new study, click File + New Study. Your first decision is the study s name, which must be four characters or less (e.g. demo ). CiW stands for Computer Interviewing for Web. CiW is the component within SSI Web for general web surveys. Note that this name appears in the files you use on the internet, so you probably shouldn t use a word that reveals something about your project that you wouldn t want revealed, such as your client s name. It is also helpful to use all lower case letters (numbers may also be included). Next, choose a folder on your hard drive (not a floppy drive) to store your project. We suggest you create a unique folder for every study you do, as it will keep things better organized. Browse to the folder (by clicking the icon) and/or create a new folder using the Create a New Folder icon on the dialog. Finally, select what type of study to create. For the purposes of this tour, select CiW Only. 3
Writing a Simple Survey From this point onward, we ll assume you ve installed the SSI Web system, and created a new study on your hard drive. Let s consider a simple questionnaire: Welcome to our survey! Today we are interested in ice cream preferences. Please type your user name and password and then click the Next button to continue -------------------------------------<Page Break>--------------------------------------- Q1. Please tell me how often you typically eat ice cream Never <If Never then terminate> Rarely Sometimes Often -------------------------------------<Page Break>--------------------------------------- Q2. In the past week, how many times have you eaten ice cream? times Q3. Which of these flavors do you often eat? (Select all that apply) <Randomize list> Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla Rocky-Road Peach Neapolitan -------------------------------------<Page Break>--------------------------------------- Q4. Please describe the last occasion in which you ate ice cream -------------------------------------<Page Break>--------------------------------------- Thank you very much. That s all we need to know today. 4
To write this survey, click Compose + Write Questionnaire. The Write Questionnaire dialog is shown: In the left panel is the list of questions that are currently in your survey. SSI Web automatically adds a <Password> question as the first page of your survey. To modify the existing <Password> question, highlight the <Password> question within the List of Questions using the mouse, and click the Edit button toward the center of this dialog (not the Edit menu at the top of the dialog). The Password Settings dialog is shown: 5
Each question in SSI Web has different text areas where you can directly type text to show on the screen (and optional HTML). The five text areas for the introductory Password question are: Header 1 Header 2 User Name Password Footer These text areas are arranged on the browser screen (if you were to preview the question) as: Header 1 Header 2 and Footer provide an easy way for you to type information into SSI Web and have these sections separated by a blank line. Let s add the introductory text for our ice cream questionnaire. Within the Header 1 field, type the text: Welcome to our survey! Today we are interested in ice cream preferences. Please type your user name and password and then click the Next button to continue Note that you can directly type the text into the Header 1 entry field, or you can click the Pencil icon to open a larger window for typing/editing text. 6
After you have done this, the dialog should look like: Next, click the Preview button at the bottom of the dialog. A small browser window opens to give a representation of what this question would look like to your respondents: Perhaps we would prefer to bold the text in the opening paragraph. Click the OK button to return to the Password Settings dialog. In the Header 1 row, check the Bold box, and click Preview. The question now appears as: 7
(Alternatively, for those that know some HTML, you could have enclosed the text you typed into the Header 1 field within <B></B> tags to accomplish the same effect.) Now let s add question 1. Click OK to close the Preview and Password Settings windows to return to the Write Questionnaire screen. The question to be added is: Q1. Please tell me how often you typically eat ice cream Never <If Never then terminate> Rarely Sometimes Often Whenever you add a question to the List of Questions, the new question is placed directly below whatever question is highlighted. If no question is highlighted, then the new question is placed at the bottom of the list. If you want to rearrange the questions within the list, you can highlight them and use the Up and Down arrows next to the list. Or, you can cut, copy and paste questions by using the Edit menu at the upper-left portion of the window (not to be confused with the Edit button). 8
Click the Add button. The Add Question dialog is shown: First, specify a name for the question in the Question Name field. Type Q1. After that, choose the question type from the drop-down box at the right-hand side of the dialog. This is a Select-type question, so choose Select and click OK. 9
The Select Question dialog is displayed: This question requires just a single response (a radio button), so you should select Radio button (single response) in the upper-left hand corner of this dialog. In the Header 1 Text field, type: Q1. Please tell me how often you typically eat ice cream (Don t forget to click the Bold checkbox in the Header 1 row.) 10
Next, let s specify the response options: Never Rarely Sometimes Often Click the Response Options button. On the Specify Response Options dialog, click Add, and type the first response Never. Press the ENTER key twice, and type the next item Rarely. Repeat for Sometimes and Often. Click OK until you return to the Select Question dialog, and click Preview: Your question should look like: Click OK (twice) to return to the Write Questionnaire dialog. 11
We hope by now you are starting to get a feel for adding questions to SSI Web. We won t give you click-by-click details for the next three questions. Instead, we ll give you some bullet-pointed suggestions. Q2. In the past week, how many times have you eaten ice cream? times This is a Numeric question Specify a Minimum value of 0 and Maximum of 24 Type the times label in the Question text area Check the Input Box to Left of Question box When you are done and click Preview, the question should look like: Next comes Q3: Q3. Which of these flavors do you often eat? (Select all that apply) <Randomize list> Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla Rocky-Road Peach Neapolitan This is a Select type question Under Select Format, choose Check Box (multiple response) When at the Specify Response Options dialog, make sure to click Randomize All Response Options Under Number of Columns, specify 2 12
When you are done and click Preview, the question should look like (notice the randomized order): Next comes Q4: Q4. Please describe the last occasion in which you ate ice cream This is an Open-end type question Under Open-end Format, choose Free Entry (multiple lines) When you are done and click Preview, the question should look like: 13
The final part of the survey is a sign-off screen thanking respondents and letting them know they are done. This really isn t a question in the sense that it doesn t require a response, but for the purposes of adding it to the list, SSI Web considers it a text-only question : Thank you very much. That s all we need to know today. This is a Text / HTML Filler type question You can name the question END Make sure to check the box indicating that this is a Terminating Question When you are done and click Preview, the question should look like: The Powered by Sawtooth Software, Inc. is shown on the last page of the survey, but you can turn this message off if you would like, under the Global Settings area accessed from the Write Questionnaire dialog (we ll discuss this dialog more at a later point). 14
Page Layout and Skip Patterns Now that we have inserted the questions into our question list, we are ready to divide them into separate pages and add any skip patterns. While at the Write Questionnaire dialog, click Layout. The Layout dialog is shown: Note that the <Password> question is on Page #1; all other questions are on Page #2. The original questionnaire instructions called for: Q1 to be followed by a page break Q2 and Q3 on the same page Q4 on its own page The termination screen at the very end, on its own page This is actually quite easy to accomplish. With the mouse, highlight Q2 on the question list, then click Set Page Break. Set a page break after Q3 and Q4. 15
When you are done, your page numbering should be as follows: Page # Question Name 1 <Password> 2 Q1 3 Q2 3 Q3 4 Q4 5 END Now for the skip pattern. We know that if respondents answer item 1 (never eat ice cream) in Q1, they should be terminated. We therefore want to set a skip pattern with the following logic: From Page 2, Skip To Page 5 If Q1=1 To do this, from the Layout dialog, click Page Skips. The Page Skip Logic dialog is shown. Click Add to add a skip pattern. Fill this next screen out as follows: 16
For simplicity sake, we only have created one terminating page (page 5) both for people who disqualify (eat no ice cream) and those who complete the survey fully. You could include multiple terminating points and mark records that terminate as Qualified or Disqualified, or even assign disposition numbers to track respondents who terminate at various points in the questionnaire. Now that we have added our questions to the study, set page breaks, and defined skip logic, let s preview our questionnaire. Previewing the Questionnaire We have already shown you how to preview each question, one at a time. We ll now show you how to preview the entire survey. At the Write Questionnaire dialog (accessed from the main menu by clicking Compose + Write Questionnaire or by clicking the Pencil icon), click Preview Survey. When you click Preview Survey, a browser window automatically opens page 1 for your review. In the background, SSI Web has created a Temp folder inside your study folder on your hard drive, and written separate static HTML pages to that folder named TempWeb1 through TempWeb5 (you have 5 pages in this questionnaire). These files are linked one to another by the Next button, for your convenience, so you can browse from page to page by just clicking the Next button. You can also send a colleague these files so that he/she can preview the survey also. Note: The Preview Survey mode is just for preview purposes only no data are stored, and no skip patterns are executed. These static pages are not uploaded to the Internet for data collection purposes. Instead, your questionnaire file is uploaded to the Internet, and the Perl scripts on your Web Server understand the instructions within the questionnaire file and create each questionnaire page, as requested by the respondent, on the fly. Test Running Your Survey Using Local Web Server Although the Preview Survey function is nice, you generally will want to take your survey in runtime mode, with any skip patterns, response verification, and randomizations in place. You could upload your files and the Perl scripts to the Web Server, but SSI Web provides a more convenient way to run your survey. When SSI Web was installed on your computer, web server software called Apache was also installed. Apache lets your computer run the questionnaire just like a remote Web Server would. Prior to running your survey, we must do one additional step: create user names and passwords for the respondents. 17
Create User Names and Passwords Most surveys use a unique user name/password for each respondent. For simplicity sake, we ll use a single User Name and Password combination for all respondents in this practice survey. From the Main Menu, click Compose + Passwords + Set Passwords. Edit this screen to add a User Name of SAWTOOTH and a Password of SOFTWARE with 1000 total respondents allowed to use that password. When finished, the screen should look like: Note that you can make this password case sensitive or not. We ll leave it not case sensitive. Click Save and then Close to return to the Main Menu. 18
Local Web Server Click Web Server + Local Web Server (or click the Globe Icon). The Local Web Server dialog is shown: This dialog informs us that a new folder demo will be created on your hard drive for the Local Web Server (Apache) to access and run. Click the Upload Survey button to copy the needed files to this folder, and then click Run Survey to start the survey. Your browser opens up the first survey question. Enter your User Name (SAWTOOTH) and password (SOFTWARE) and click the Next button. This is your survey, as it would appear to a respondent over the Internet (there are slight visual differences from browser to browser). Each time you take the survey, a respondent record is written into the Local Web Server folder on your hard drive. If you upload the survey again, a new copy of your questionnaire is written to this folder and any of your practice data are deleted. To close the survey, simply close the browser window (using the X in the upper-right hand corner). To run the survey again, click Run Survey from the Local Web Server dialog. Go ahead and take a few surveys, as we ll need the data for the next section of this tour. 19
The Online Data Management Module When you eventually upload your project files and the Perl scripts to your Web Server (or if you have Sawtooth Software set up your project on our servers), an administrative area is available for you. You can access this administrative area from any computer connected to the Web. You protect this area using a password, so that others cannot access your survey settings or the survey data. With the data management module, you can Check how many completed records you have View respondent data Tabulate responses for individual questions Download data to your hard drive Reset password quotas Download passwords for respondents who have completed/not completed In this tour, we ll cover viewing respondent data and downloading. First, let s review your password for the Online Data Management Module. From SSI Web s Main Menu, click File + Settings. On the Settings dialog, you can review the randomly-generated password that SSI Web prepared for this project. You can modify this password if you d like by simply editing the password fields. However, these new passwords would not be implemented within your Local Web Server project unless you uploaded the files again. Uploading the files again would overwrite any practice data you had created, so let s not modify them for this example. Write your User Name and Read-Modify Password down on a scrap piece of paper, so you can refer to it when we next log onto the Administrative Module (case sensitive). It is also useful at this point to review what folder you are using for your project and write this on the scrap paper, as you ll need to know this when working with the Online Administrative Module. The project folder is shown in the bottom panel of the main SSI Web dialog, as Path: <Your Path>. 20
Logging onto the Data Management Module From SSI Web s main menu, click Web Server + Local Web Server. Click View Admin and your browser opens up the Login screen for the Online Data Management Module. Again, we are only simulating what occurs when your survey is actually installed on a remote Web Server. The Online Data Management Module appears just as it would over the Web, but we are only working with files installed on your hard drive. Log onto the Data Management Module using your User Name (by default, admin ) and Password (this is customized for each project, and if you followed instructions from the previous section, you should have written this on a scrap piece of paper). Otherwise, you can review your administrative passwords by returning to the main SSI Web program, and clicking File + Settings. When you successfully log onto the Data Management Module using a Read-Modify password, the main menu is displayed: 21
Accumulating/Downloading Data For this quick tour, we ll just accumulate completed surveys and download them to your project folder. Accumulating completed surveys places all the complete respondent records into a single data file. Click Accumulate Qualified/Complete Surveys and then click the Continue button. The Administrative module confirms how many records have been moved into the single master file. Next, from the main menu of the Administrative Module, click Download Accumulated Surveys. Depending on your browser, this dialog may appear differently. The browser often asks whether you d like to open the file or save it to your computer. Select to save it to your computer, and browse to your main project folder on your hard drive (in the previous section, we asked you to write this down on the scrap paper). The master file of respondent data is called STUDYNAMEdat.dat, where STUDYNAME is the four-character study name you created. Before proceeding, you may want to make sure that this file is indeed within your main project folder. 22
Exporting (Converting) Data to Excel TM Format After you have collected data and downloaded to your hard drive, you typically will want to convert the data to a common format for analysis. SSI Web can convert the data (and labels) to SPSS TM, Excel TM or Text-Only (ASCII) formats. For this tour, we ll just use the Excel format (.CSV). If you haven t already done so, close the browser window and return to the main SSI Web menu. Click File + Export Data + All Data, and the Export All Data dialog is shown: The Export File Type tab lets you specify the type of file and filename/folder to save to. The Respondent Filter tab lets you choose which respondents to include, and the Data to Export tab lets you choose which variables to export. 23
For this example, we ll just use the default settings. Click the Export button, and the.csv file is created in the indicated folder. To see the result, using your Windows Operating System, browse to the folder and double-click the STUDYNAME.csv file (probably called demo.csv if your study was named demo ). Your system should associate a.csv file with the Excel spreadsheet program, so this action should immediately open your data file within Excel. Here are our results (yours will be different): Responses for Q1 and Q2 are quite straightforward. Q1 was a single-select question, and the first respondent answered with the first response option (coded as a 1 ). This response option disqualified the respondent, so no more data are available for this case. Respondent number 2 clicked the second option for Q1 and typed a 3 for Q2 (how many times eaten ice cream in last week). Q3 is a multiple-response (checkbox) question. Respondent number 2 checked the first and fourth items (a 1 indicates checked and a 0 indicates not checked). SSI Web automatically unscrambles the random order and presents it here in the natural order you specified when you created the survey. 24
Global Settings Before we finish this tutorial, we d like to show you the Global Settings, which is a useful area for customizing the way your questionnaire looks. For example, you can change the fonts, colors, and text used for the Next button. Global refers to the idea that any settings here are applied across the entire survey. From the main SSI Web menu, click Compose + Write Questionnaire + Global Settings The Global Settings dialog is displayed: There are various tabs on this menu for controlling different aspects of your survey. On this first tab Format Settings, among other things, you can choose the background color/graphic, choose a global font (such as Arial or Times) and specify the text to use for the Next button. A Preview button let s you quickly preview how these changes might affect the survey. For the sake of brevity, we won t cover all aspects of Global Settings. However, if you take a few minutes to investigate, you ll discover that you can create Global Headers/Footers (text and/or graphics) to place at the top or bottom of each survey 25
page. You can also add a progress bar, or create a simple browser window for the respondent that strips away the standard browser controls and maximizes the real estate that can be used for your survey. Adding Graphics As a last point, we d like to show you how easy it is to add graphics to your survey. The typical kinds of graphics files you use for web surveys are in.gif or.jpg format. You can likely find a number of graphics files with this format on your hard drive (use the File Find capability within Windows if you do not immediately know of a.gif or.jpg file on your computer). You may recall that in SSI Web, most any place that you provide survey text, there is also a Pencil icon, which opens up a larger Window for typing text. This larger window also includes a Toolbar, as shown below: For example, this toolbar helps you bold (B), italicize (I), or Underline (U) text within your survey (using the toolbar buttons automatically insert HTML instructions, which browsers know how to interpret to create the desired effects). You can also use the toolbar to add graphics. Place your cursor at the place in your text at which you wish a graphic to show. Then, click the camera icon. A dialog appears that asks you to type a file name or browse to find the graphic to add to the survey. Type the name, or browse to the file and click the Open button to insert the graphic. Special HTML instructions are added to your text to tell the browser what file to display and where to find it on the server. When you preview or run the questionnaire using Local Web Server, the graphic is displayed. (Make sure to keep your graphics small, as large graphics files can take a long time to show for respondents with slow connections. Typical graphics sizes for surveys are about 20KB or smaller.) Conclusion This quick tour has only touched on the basics. We encourage you to search the on-line help, or to print out the complete documentation. The documentation is provided in a.pdf format called SSI Web Documentation.PDF within your SSI Web installation folder. And of course, if you have any questions, you can contact us at 360/681-2300 or write us at info@sawtoothsoftware.com. Our hours are 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific, Mon-Fri. 26