[phpesp-dev] design thoughts needed: hidden from view, but automatically populated, response

[Bishop B. <ph...@id...>]

All,

Suppose you want to cross-tabulate respondent last name versus a =20
question on your survey, to answer say something like "How many =20
Smith's said their household income was too low?"

Right now, you have to ask the user their last name, because the =20
cross-tabulation works against the survey data, not against the =20
respondent data.  You've already got the user's information, so why =20
ask for it?

Yes, this example is contrived.  But, this scenario stems from a =20
particular need of mine, where I'm actually augmenting the respondent =20
data with age, gender, ethnicity, etc. and I want to be able to use =20
the built-in cross-tabulation functionality against those metrics: =20
"How many women answered yes to question 1?"

The idea I've come up with is to have "hidden" survey fields, similar =20
to hidden input elements in HTML.  The survey would have place holders =20
for the value, but when the respondent logs in, those input elements =20
aren't seen but are populated from a data source.

To implement this, I would add a new type to the question type =20
drop-down called "hidden".  The name would be required, as usual.  The =20
text would either static text or a template variable.

so, you might have this:

Name =3D Q1
Type =3D Hidden
Text =3D foo

Which would render as
<input type=3D"hidden" name=3D"Q1" value=3D"foo" />

For my particular need, I'd put in template variable aliases (a la =20
Smarty) for respondent, etc. so that data could be accessed:

Name =3D Q1
Type =3D Hidden
Text =3D $respondent.gender

Like executing this:
<input type=3D"hidden" name=3D"Q1" value=3D"<?=3D $respondent['gender'] ?>" =
/>

Yielding after rendering, e.g:
<input type=3D"hidden" name=3D"Q1" value=3D"M" />


Thoughts?

bishop

--=20
Bishop Bettini
ideacode, Inc.
(main) +1 919 341 5170 / (fax) +1 919 521 4100

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