OnQ,a Survey Authoring Tool

Survey 2000

Developed at Northwestern University

Hosted on National Geographic

Funded by National Science Foundation (NSF)

Goal: How is a person shaped by his/her environment?

Survey 2001

Developed at Clemson UniversityHosted on National Geographic http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/survey2001/servlet/Page1

Funded by National Science Foundation (NSF)

Goal: How does the Internet impact our society?

3 initial groups of questions: Demography Internet Environment

Survey 2001: Problems

2196 questions / around 1500 answers

Manual data entry

Error-prone

Difficult to proofread and edit

OnQ: An Authoring Tool

GUI based

Use of database

Easy creation of skip patterns

Multimedia components

Surveys on the Web

Widespread use of the Internet

Number of Internet users: May 2002: 580,780,000 (NUA.com) May 2002: 389,570,230 (Nielson/Net Ratings)

June 2002: 391,042,644 (Nielson/Net Ratings) September 2002: 605,600,000 (NUA.com)

Other Survey Authoring Tools

Web Surveyor

WWW Survey Assistant

Hosted Survey

Survey Said for the Web

Sawtooth’s Sensus Web

OnQ: Architecture

Java programming language, version 1.4.0

MySQL database, version 3.23.40

MySQL Connector J, (formerly MM.Mysql)

Apache web server, version 1.3.40

Tomcat servlet engine, version 3.2.3

OnQ: An Authoring Tool

Question Editor (Cathy Hochrine) Sequence Developer (Laura Brand) Formatting (Meg Staton) Presentation (other)

4 modules:

Design of OnQ:

Database Tables for OnQ

Database Tables For the Question Editor Module of OnQ

OnQ: Question Editor Module

Question Composition Questions -

with a prefix, root, suffix

Languages Categories Keyword

association

OnQ: Question Editor Module

Answer Composition Types of answer

options: radio buttons, check boxes, drop-down lists, text area, text field

Choice for the number of answers, or the dimensions

OnQ: Sequence Developer Module

Question Blocks and Transitions Create, edit, and view

question blocks and transitions

Boolean evaluator for skip patterns

Randomization of questions within a question block

OnQ: Formatting Module

Format Individual Questions Survey author can

design way in which questions will be presented

Can add images, sound, video

Can choose placement of images

OnQ: Formatting Module

Format Question Blocks Each question block

is presented on a page

Author can define “page ends” within a question block

OnQ: Presentation Module

Uses Tomcat servlet engine to display (serve) pages to the clients

Also, serves pages to the survey author during development These pages look exactly as they will look

when the survey is deployed Author can modify the formatting during

development

Results

GUI

Arbitrarily complex boolean expressions

Multimedia components

Multi-language; Categories; keyword association

Presentation

Multiple-platform implementation

Improvements to OnQ

Fine-tune OnQ

Accessing other databases

Make it Web-based

Other checks

Pop-up search box

Current Use of OnQ

Diversity 2002United Way of Greenville http://johnryan.clemson.edu/UnitedWay/servlet/Page1

Marketing Department at Clemson University

Engineering Department at Clemson

Future Use of OnQ

Survey 2003 Goal: How do encounters with information on

the Internet change peoples’ perceptions of environmental hazards?

OnX – Online eXercises/eXamination A learning and assessment authoring tool

Acknowledgements

Dr. Roy PargasDr. James WitteDr. Art PellerinDr. Sandra HedetniemiOnQ development team: Kowshik Jaganathan Laura Brand Meg Staton

Thank You