Formats for sending data by email
Formats for sending data by email All our questionnaires are designed for online use. But sometimes researchers need to administer the questionnaires using their own display engines under licence, or need to use paper-and ink versions. It's then a question of getting your data to us so our report generators can score the data and produce the standard reports. Data submitted by you via email will be analysed using the same report generators as if it was online, but there is no facility for cross-tabulations and listing of user comments in this kind of data. See below for how to manage this.
Please study the online page of the questionnaire ( sumi.uxp.ie/en ) to ensure that your version looks like our online version as much as possible. Please also include the text
in a place on your page where visitors can see it. You should also give careful consideration about how much of the ethical compliance statement you are able to include in your version.
SUMI data is scored as follows:
AGREE : 1 DON'T KNOW : 2 DISAGREE : 3 |
SUMI data is basically provided in one block, each line consists of 50 numbers in groups of ten, followed by a comma, and an ID for the participant. IDs may be numbers or letters of the alphabet but don't use accents. Here is an example:
3113131221 3112131311 3312313111 1111332311 2121123133, 001 / lines beginning like this are comments and are ignored 2211112231 1221221131 2121131321 3112111121 1213111211, 709 3113111333 1112131311 3111111331 3111111131 1113112311, 510 / blank lines may be inserted anywhere 3111211223 1111231221 3313222213 1122312221 1121213233, 124 3113111223 1221131321 2312221211 2111231221 1111212123, 276 / / there are five records in this data set / end of data |
Use a text processor such as Notepad to create this file. If you are writing in a language which uses accents, make sure your text is coded as UTF-8. Use the Windows end-of-line convention (ie, CRLF, or in hex: 0D0A).
You can always put in blank lines and comment lines to make your data clearer to yourself. The last line
/ end of data
is not strictly necessary but it is good for safety's sake.
Your data most probably includes much more information than just the SUMI responses. By using the ID feature, you are able to link the scored SUMI data to all the other information your respondent has provided. In order to be ethically compliant with regard to identifying your respondents, don't include any information on computer media that can be used to connect an ID with the identity of a person. We usually pencil IDs on the top right hand corner of a questionnaire form, and put a small mark after the ID if we have checked the correctness of the entered data.
Your data needs meta-data in order to provide a correct report. You must insert the following information at the start of the data file:
/ lines beginning like this are comments and are ignored title: a few words to describe the dataset system: name of system being evaluated client: your name email: your email address date: date you submitted data for analysis, format YYYY-MM-DD / if you use a comma in your csv file like: , specify coding: standard / if you use a semicolon in your cvs like: ; specify coding: continental / coding: standard is default coding: standard OR continental |
Below is an example of a complete file. You can send it either as the body of an email message coded as 'straight ascii' or as a MIME encoded attachment, with a file type of .txt.
title: fictitious data used for example system: NoName System client: Jurek Kirakowski email: jzk@uxp.ie date: 2019-06-09 coding: standard / main collection 3113131221 3112131311 3312313111 1111332311 2121123133, 001 2211112231 1221221131 2121131321 3112111121 1213111211, 709 3113111333 1112131311 3111111331 3111111131 1113112311, 510 / special lab sample 3111211223 1111231221 3313222213 1122312221 1121213233, 124 3113111223 1221131321 2312221211 2111231221 1111212123, 276 / end of data |
Points to note: