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Comment: issue w/question ID (removed ":")

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Click on 'Add Question' to add a text Text question. You should see the following:

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You will now see that there are two sections in the Form Builder main page:

  1. Question TreeTree - this is where you will be able to navigate among questions and change the order of questions. This is the portion on the left hand side.
  2. Question Properties - this is where you control the actual content and properties of each question. This is the section on the right-hand side. This section can be further divided into three other sections that are controlled by the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner.

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Delete this text question by using the red delete button in the upper right-hand corner.

 


Info
titleMore detail on Question IDs!

You cannot put just anything as a Question ID. Here are the rules:

  • No spaces (underscores are fine; if you try to add a space it will be replaced by an underscore)
  • No special characters (like "&" and "$")
  • Cannot start with a number
  • Cannot be the same as another Question ID in the same form

If you violate one or more of these rules, you'll get a warning message! Try it!

In addition, we can suggest some best practices for Question IDs:

  • Make them descriptive- when you look at the data exports you are not going to see the Label text; you are only going to see the Question ID.
  • Be consistent- it is best to have a simple system such as using CamelCase or using underscores like first_name. This will make it easier when you are referencing Question IDs later.

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2- Add questions

Let's start adding questions to this form.

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  • Click on the 'Add Question' button again to add a text question
  • Set Display text to say: Woman's Name:
  • Set the Question ID to say "womans_name:"
    • By default, CommCare will attempt to create a Display Text based on the question id. This can be altered to whatever you would like it to be. 

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You can ignore everything that is not in the this "Basic" section.

Info
titleWhat is the difference between Question ID and Label Text?

Question ID is what the data will look like when viewing the form submission. The mobile user WILL NOT see the question ID, only people look at the data will. If you are going to use a data analysis package, you may want to consider what format of the Question ID will be easiest for your software to process.

Display Text is the text that the mobile user will see. If you have more than one language in your application you will have labels for each language, but the same Question ID. You can have any type of special character (or non-English text) in a Label.

 


Here's how the question will look on CommCare for Android:

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Here's how it is going to look on the phone:

 


Changing the Order

Look at the question tree- now we have two questions, "Woman's Name:" and "Village Name:". Let's say we want to put "Village Name:" as the first question. You will click on "Village Name:" in the Question Tree, and then drag it above "Woman's Name:". There is a small bar that will show where the question is going to be inserted and you will also see a green check mark.  It will look like this:

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Here's how this question will look on the phone (note that calendar questions may differ depending upon phone models):

 


Multiple Choice Question: Had previous pregnancy?

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  • Display Text: Has the woman given birth to any children that are still alive?
  • Question ID: living_children

However, we also need have to add choices to the question. Select 'Add Choice' button and you will see something similar to what you have seen for other questions. By default, there are no choices, so let's press the button twice to add two:

 


The Choice Value is similar to the Question ID - this is how the data will be coded; the Display Text is the text that the user will see. 

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Here is how this question will appear on the phone:

 


Number Questions: How Many Children?

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Here's how it will look on the phone:

 


Multiple Choice Question: Feeling Sick today?

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You've got a beautiful form! But before we go too far we should test the form. It's important to test your form frequently so you can catch mistakes early. Fortunately, CommCare has a built in tool for form testing that doesn't even require a phone.

Note that your followup forms must have at least one question before we can test them using the tools described in the next section. Likely, one of your followup forms was pre-populated with a label. Check your second followup form, if there are no questions on it, add one label (it can simply be called, 'placeholder') which can be deleted later when populating the form with further detail. 

Go on to the next section, Part 4.