Creating a Survey using KompoZer
KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and
easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editing. With KompoZer,
newcomers will quickly and easily be able to produce new web pages. It is a useful tool for
students who are a first-time user or are working on a project to make a web page for a
particular course. It has most of the features of Microsoft Word Document - working with it
will be similar to writing reports or documents using Word.
KompoZer can be used to create survey forms for course projects. In this tutorial we
explain: the most common survey question (field) types; how the system collects the
results and stores it in the system; and how the survey results can be downloaded in an
excel file to your system.
Creating a Form
Assuming that you have downloaded and installed KompoZer, the following steps are for
creating a survey form:
1. Create a web page: You can select any of the templates to start learning to
construct a web page, or you can use it for your project or assignment. You can
download them from the links given below.
http://ltc.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/ltc/resources/Templates/web_template1.zip
http://ltc.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/ltc/resources/Templates/web_template2.zip
It is also possible to download and use other web templates from
http://www.oswd.org/. However, we have already made some customizations in
the above templates to make them easier to edit.
To open a file in KompoZer, click on ‘File’ and select ‘Open File’, browse the template
for a .html file and click ‘Open’. When the file is opened on the right side you can
start editing the contents.
For more instructions on creating a web page in KompoZer, click here.
2. Creating a Form: To create a survey form open KompoZer, click ‘Insert’ and select
‘Form’ and ‘Define Form’. A small form properties box will open, type ‘form’ in the
Form Name tab, type ‘action’ in the Action URL tab, and select Method as ‘post’, and
click on the OK button. See the picture below:
You will now see a light blue dotted box where you have to put all your text boxes,
radio buttons, and drop down lists for the form. Press ‘Enter’ a couple of times to get
more space to work on.
3. Adding a Submit button: To create a Submit button go to ‘Insert’, ‘Form’, and ‘Form
Field’ and select ‘Submit Button’ in the field type drop-down list. Type ‘Submit’ in
the ‘Field Name’ and ‘Field Value’ and click OK. You will now see a Submit Button.
Adding Fields to the Form
1. Create a text field: A text field is a box where you can type text like your name, or
answer two or three word questions. To create a text field, go to ‘Insert’ ‘Form’ and
select ‘Form Field’. A small form field properties box will open. Select ‘Text’ in the
Field Type drop down list. In the ‘Field Name’ tab type your variable name. For
example: You want to type a name in the text field, so type as ‘name’, or
email_address; do not use spaces when typing the names of variables. Now click OK.
See the picture below:
You will now see a text field like in the picture below:
2. Creating a Drop-down list: Drop-down list boxes allow the user to choose an entry
from a list, which drops down immediately below the field, and shows which values
can be chosen. To create a drop-down list, go to ‘Insert’ ‘Form’ and select ‘Selection
List’. Create a list name for example: age_group, making sure to include no spaces.
Now, click on ‘Add Option’. When you click ‘add option’ you will see that a new ‘text’
and ‘value’ tab comes up, type ‘Please Select’ in the text tab; the value tab will
automatically copy it. Check the box ‘Initially Selected’ and click ‘Add Option’. This
will create a ‘Please Select’ text in your drop-down list by default. Now keep on
adding your options in the text tab and click on ‘Add Option’ each time you want to
add a new option to the drop-down list. You should make sure to enter a value in the
value tab, since the values are what will appear in your survey results when you
download them. When you are finished click OK. See the pictures below:
3. Creating a Radio Button for Yes/No or two variable questions: A radio button is
the small circle beside an option you can choose in a question. Radio buttons can be
created by going to ‘Insert’ ‘Form’ and ‘Form Field’. A small form field properties
box will open. In the ‘field type’ drop down list, select ‘Radio Button’ and in the
‘Group Name’ type a name of the variable. For example: type yes_no with no spaces.
In the ‘Field Value’ tab type a value, for example: 1. Now, click OK. You will now see a
radio button in the text box:
You have to go through the same process to include a ‘NO’ radio button. When you
open the form field properties box like the one shown above, type the same group
name as you have used earlier, so in this case we will also use ‘yes_no’ but in the
field value we will use ‘2’ because it is a second option that we are including in the
same group. See the picture below:
Note: You can also use words with no spaces in the ‘Field Value’ tab to number your
variables, but if you are using SPSS or other statistics packages, numbers are
preferable.
4. Creating radio buttons for Likert Scale or rating questions: Radio buttons can be
created by going to ‘Insert’ ‘Form’ and ‘Form Field’. A small form field properties
box will open. In the ‘field type’ drop down list, select ‘Radio Button’ and in the
‘Group Name’ type a name of the variable. The group name should be used always
when inserting one or more radio buttons. For example: for a Likert Scale question
with 5 variable ratings, with the ‘Group Name’ of ‘likely’, you would have to include
this group name each time you want to add a different radio button, with ‘Field
Value’ of 1 through 5. See the series of pictures below:
5. Create a check box: A check box is a box that can be checked by the user with
multiple selections. To create a check box, go to ‘Insert’, ‘Form’ and ‘Form Field’. In
the ‘Field type’ drop down list select ‘Check Box’. In the ‘Field Name’ tab, type a
variable name with no spaces and type the ‘Initial Value’ as a number or words. If
you are using SPSS, it is preferable to use numbers, like ‘1’. If you are using check
boxes, use different names in the ‘Field Name’ but with same numbers in the ‘Initial
Value’. For example: with 5 checkboxes to be inserted, you would use ‘check_box_1’,
‘check_box_2’, ‘check_box_3’ etc as ‘Field Name’ each time you want to add a new
checkbox in the question; but will type ‘1’ as ‘Initial Value’ each time a new checkbox
is added. See the picture below:
6. Create a text area: A text area, or a text window, is an area on a web page which
can be typed into, like a comments box at the end of the survey. Go to ‘Insert’, ‘Form’
and ‘Text Area’. Type the ‘Field Name’ with no spaces and the number of rows and
columns, according to how much you would want your audience to write. Click OK.
See the pictures below:
Creating a debriefing (Thank You) page
After creating the survey page, you will need to create a Thank You page or a debriefing
page which will give a thank you message to the user for participating in the survey after
they have submitted the survey and carry it to the survey system database. An easy way to
to create the thank you page is to copy the .html file containing the survey to a new .html
page (naming it as thankyou.html), and editing the new page to replace the form with your
‘Thank You’ message.
Uploading to your web space
After creating the survey form, the web page needs to be posted to the web space. To post
your web page into the web-space, you have to map the network to H: Drive. Server:
home.acadiau.ca Share: users/username. It is also known as the Home Directory and also
the home of your website. For more instructions on posting your web space, click here
Connecting your web pages to the survey system
Internet Explorer Users: If you use Internet Explorer, you may want to add the Survey
System to your Trusted Sites. This will makes things easier when it comes time to
download your results. To do this process, open Internet Explorer and go to ‘Tools’, click on
‘Internet Options’. When the window opens, go to ‘Security’ tab and click on ‘Trusted Sites’
and ‘Sites’. Add http://surveys.acadiau.ca in the ‘Add this website to the zone’ tab. Make
sure that there is no check mark in the ‘Require server verification (https:) for all sites in
this zone’ check box.
1. Register with the Survey System: Go to http://surveys.acadiau.ca and click on
‘Registration’ if you are a new user of the survey system. Fill in the ‘Username’, ‘Full
Name’ and ‘E-mail’ tabs, using your proper Acadia e-mail address and click on
Submit.
2. Creating a Survey with the Survey System: Log in to the survey system
(http://surveys.acadiau.ca). Click on ‘My Surveys’, and type your ‘Survey Name’ in
the ‘Add a Survey’ box. Beside Survey URL type the actual URL of where the
survey's web page (the form) is or will be hosted. It doesn't have to be in place now,
but this address is important and will be used later in some html code that needs to
be in the survey before it will work with the Survey System. If for example, you
have created a file called survey.html and saved it in a ‘WWW’ folder in the H: Drive
of
Acadia
network
folders,
then
your
URL
should
be,
http://www.acadiau.ca/~123456a/survey.html (Note: 123456a should be replaced
your Acadia ID). Click on the Add button to complete the survey creation process.
When you have created the survey, an e-mail will be sent out to the administrator of
the system to ‘authorize’ your survey. This is simply a formality to prevent abuse or
improper use of the system.
3. Managing Survey in the system: To manage the survey, click on the survey in the
‘Current Surveys’ box and click on ‘Manage’. In the ‘Thank you URL’ tab, type your
thank
you
page
URL;
for
example:
http://www.acadiau.ca/~123456a/thankyoupagename.html. Set the ’survey status’
to Open. Click on ‘Commit Changes’ to save the changes you made. You can also edit
your survey by setting up ‘track submission timing’ which tracks the time of when
the user completed your survey and saves it with the data in the excel file. There are
also other options that you can choose according to your preferences.
4. Connecting the form to your Survey: To connect your form to the survey system,
click on the survey in the ‘Current Surveys’ box and click on ‘Manage’. At the top of
the page, click on ‘Generate HTML’, a two line code will come up; copy that code, and
open your main survey file in KompoZer. Click on ‘Split’ or ‘Source’ at the bottom of
the KompoZer page. This will show the HTML code of your survey. Look for ‘<form>’
in the first part of your code and replace it with the code that was copied from the
survey system. Save the file and replace it in the WWW folder again. Test it with
http://www.acadiau.ca/~123456a/filename.html and your survey is ready to go.
See the picture below:
The highlighted line is the form tag, which should be replaced by the code in the survey
system. The picture below is what it looks like after being replaced, with the highlighted
lines being the replaced code:
5. Testing your survey: Test it with http://www.acadiau.ca/~123456a/filename.html
and your survey is ready to go.
6. Download results: If you want to download the results of the files after the survey,
log in to the survey system, select your current survey, and click on ‘Manage’. At the
bottom of the page in the ‘Extract Survey Results’ box, click on ‘Excel Table’ and your
result file will be downloaded.