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QESSUMRY.EXE Copyright (c) 1988 R. Mike Worley Boise, Idaho REGISTRATION & WARRANTY QESSUMRY is not warranted in any way, nor is it applicable to any specific application. The user is solely responsible for any and all consequences resulting from the use of this program. There are no known bugs in the program, but that doesn't mean you might not find one. QESSUMRY is offered under the Shareware concept. You are free to try it to determine if it will meet your needs, and you are encouraged to upload program and documentation to bulletin boards. If you continue to use this program, you are asked to register. To register, complete the registration form on the last page of this documentation and send it to the address listed. Users are asked to send a registration fee of $10.00. If you do not feel you can afford the $10, but still like the program, please send the registration anyway. I do ask that you register just so I will have an idea of the level of usage of this program. PROGRAM SUMMARY and HISTORY QESSUMRY is a program to summarize data from bulletin board questionnaires developed for RBBS-PC. The program will tally the number of responses for multiple choice and yes/no questions, and will calculate a response percentage for each choice. QESSUMRY will ignore questions requiring a text response, provided in- dividual the questions are named as outlined below. It will also skip questions for which there have been no responses, as sometimes occurs when the questionnaire follows different paths depending on answers to previous questions. Output can be to a Text File, a Printer, or to a Delimited Data File for use with database programs. QESSUMRY will also create a special text file which integrates the actual questions from the questionnaire .DEF file with the response summaries. QESSUMRY started as QESTALLY, which was released in February, 1988. Some users requested improvements to the program to make it more versatile in output. The delimited data file output was immediately added, but before the revision was released, I noted a need to integrate the actual questions from the .DEF file with the answer summaries. This creates a bulletin which shows the reader the question, the correct answer, and the summary of responses. The revision was major enough to warrant renaming the program, and thus QESSUMRY was born. DEFINING THE QUESTIONS The RBBS-PC questionnaire is developed according to the directions in the RBBS-PC documentation. Each questionnaire is named with a filename of up to eight characters with a mandatory extension of .DEF. Questionnaires which will be summarized with QESSUMRY must follow these guidelines: 1. The data file where the questionnaire responses are recorded MUST have an extension of .DAT . The "Summarize Questionnaire" option of QESSUMRY requires that both the .DAT and .DEF files have the same file name. If used the answer file must also have the same filename. Therefore, the data file for UPLOAD.DEF (the questionnaire) would have a data file named UPLOAD.DAT and an optional answer file named UPLOAD.ANS. 2. Multiple choice and yes/no questions MUST be designated by the label "QUESTION", followed by a two-digit question number. It is preferable, but not necessary, that single-digit question numbers by preceded by a zero. According to the questionnaire develop- ment criteria for RBBS-PC, labels are indicated by a colon (:). Therefore, multiple choice question number 2 would be labeled :QUESTION02 To avoid conflicts, questions requiring text input should have a label other than "QUESTIONxx". See Examples. 3. QESSUMRY will summarize up to 15 multiple-choice or yes/no questions per questionnaire, each with up to 8 choices. Multiple choice responses must be in the range A-H. QESSUMRY is not case- sensitive to responses, so both upper and lower case responses are acceptable. Yes/no questions must have the "yes" response listed first. (Responses must be Y/N - True/False or T/F responses are not supported by QESSUMRY.) RUNNING THE PROGRAM QESSUMRY is a stand-alone executable program. It must exist on the same drive/subdirectory as the questionnaire data file. If you wish to use the Summarize Questionnaire option, the .DEF file for the questionnaire must also exist on the same drive/subdirectory. Additionally, the .DAT and .DEF files must have the same file name. Variation 1: To start the program, type QESSUMRY at the DOS prompt. QESSUMRY will display its intro logo and ask for the name of the questionnaire data file. You may enter either the filename alone, or with the extension of .DAT. If the filename is entered without an extension, QESSUMRY will append .DAT to the filename. You will then be asked whether you want the output routed to a Database file, Text file, Printer or whether you want to Summarize the Questionnaire. The default is to a text file. See OUTPUT OPTIONS. Variation 2: QESSUMRY may also be started by placing the output selection and filename on the command line. The output selection follows the program name and is indicated by either "-" or "/". The data filename follows the output selec- tion, and does NOT include an extension. Example: C:> QESSUMRY -D 300BAUD will output the tally of responses to 300BAUD.DAT to a delimited data file called 300BAUD.DTA. C:> QESSUMRY /p upload will output the tally of responses to UPLOAD.DAT to the printer. NOTE: If you use the command line option, you MUST include both the output specification and the filename. You cannot omit either, and they must appear in the correct order. Command line entries are not case-sensitive. OUTPUT OPTIONS Text [F]ile The default output option is to a text file with the name <filename>.FIL. This will create an ASCII text file on the default drive/subdirectory contain- ing the number of responses and a percentage breakdown of each response. (P)rinter If you select Printer, QESSUMRY will direct its output to your default printer. This output will be in the same form as the text file output, but will be formatted to break properly on 11 inch paper. (D)atabase File If you select Datafile, QESSUMRY will direct its output to a file called <filename>.DTA. There will be one text line for each question in the question- naire. The file format is: 1) The word "QUESTION" followed by the question number 2) the total number of responses to that question 3-10) the number of responses to each choice A-H. If the question is a yes/no, "Y" responses will be in field 3 and "N" responses in field 4. Fields are delimited by commas. NOTE: This output is NOT of itself in any particular database format. It is merely in the delimited format which can be imported by various database programs. (S)ummarize Questionnaire If you select Summarize Questionnaire, QESSUMRY will tally the responses. It will then check for the existence of a file called <filename>.ANS. This is the answer file for those questionnaires where there is a "correct" answer for each question. If this file is located on the default drive/sub-directory, QESSUMRY will insert the correct answers into the output file. The answer file may have correct answers on one line, delimited by commas, or may have each answer on a separate line. NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure that there are the proper number of answers for the number of questions in the questionnaire. QESSUMRY will terminate abnormally if there are too few answers in the .ANS file for the number of questions. Valid entries for the .ANS file are Y, N, or A-H. Entries are not case-sensitive. If no .ANS file exists, you will be asked if you wish to provide "correct" answers to the questions. If the questionnaire is of the general survey type where there is no "right" answer to the question, press "N". If you do wish to provide "correct" answers, such as to a knowledge questionnaire, press "Y"; QESSUMRY will then display each question in the questionnaire and prompt you for the correct answer. In this form, only a one character response is accepted, but the responses are not case-sensitive. The output of this option is to a text file named <filename>.SUM. .FIL, .DTA, and .SUM files will be over-written each time their option is selected. EXAMPLES In the following example of an RBBS-PC questionnaire, the question :HOWMANY would be ignored by QESSUMRY. The questionnaire outputs its information to a file called UPLOAD.DAT, which is the file that QESSUMRY would use to summarize the responses to this questionnaire. (This example is not a complete question- naire) "UPLOAD.DAT",7 * :QUESTION01 *How long have you been a user of this BBS? * * A. New User (just signing on) * B. Less than 1 month * C. More than 1 month but less than 6 months * D. More than 6 months but less than 1 year * E. More than 1 year * ?Enter A, B, C, D, or E =AABORT=BHOWMANY=CHOWMANY=DHOWMANY=EHOWMANY= QUESTION01 :HOWMANY *How many times do you estimate you have called this BBS? * ? :QUESTION02 * * *Do you feel uploads should be allowed by all users. (Y/N) * ? =YQUESTION04=NQUESTION03= QUESTION02 * :QUESTION03 * *Since you do not feel that all users should upload, how do you feel about *uploads? * * A. The current policy should be maintained. * B. No user uploads are necessary. * C. I sign on here for the messages, not files. * D. All of the above * E. Both B and C * ?Enter A, B, C, D, or E =AEXIT=BEXIT=CEXIT=DEXIT=EEXIT= QUESTION03 :QUESTION04 * *There are several ways uploads can be handled. Do you support: * * A. All users should be required to upload in a certain proportion to * the number of files they download. * B. Users should be free to upload if they want, but should not be * restricted from the number of files they download if they do not * upload. * C. Users should only be allowed to upload after a certain 'trial period' * to be sure they will act responsibly. * D. I've reconsidered - I think uploads should be discouraged on this BBS. * ?Enter A, B, C, or D =AQUESTION05=BQUESTION07=CQUESTION06=DQUESTION03= QUESTION04 ... This is an example of the Text file or Printer output from QESSUMRY. Again, this is only a partial display, and is intended only as an example. QESSUMRY (c) UPLOAD.DAT 06-11-1988 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 11:04 Question 1 Total Answers: 16 Choice # Responding Percentage A or Y: 0 0.00 % B or N: 4 25.00 % C: 2 12.50 % D: 5 31.25 % E: 5 31.25 % F: 0 0.00 % G: 0 0.00 % H: 0 0.00 % .............................................................................. Question 2 Total Answers: 16 Choice # Responding Percentage A or Y: 9 56.25 % B or N: 7 43.75 % C: 0 0.00 % D: 0 0.00 % E: 0 0.00 % F: 0 0.00 % G: 0 0.00 % H: 0 0.00 % .............................................................................. REGISTRATION QESSUMRY Name:___________________________________________________________ Address:________________________________________________________ City:____________________ State:______ Zip Code:__________ Are you a SYSOP of an operating BBS? ( ) Yes ( ) No If Yes, what is the data phone number for the BBS? ___________________ Where did you obtain your copy of QESSUMRY? ________________________________ If from a BBS, what is the name and number of the BBS? ______________________ OPTIONAL $10.00 Registration fee enclosed: ( ) Complete and send to: R. Mike Worley P.O. Box 45321 Boise, ID 83711