Editing positioning of data dictionary items

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jhiggins
Posts: 8
Joined: March 14th, 2019, 11:07 am

Editing positioning of data dictionary items

Post by jhiggins »

Hello,

I have been adding items to the bottom of my data dictionary, but need to ensure that they are positioned in a certain order so that the correct questions are asked in the correct order when my survey is administered on a tablet. I originally thought that positioning them the way that I wanted on my form would allow this, but I believe this is only true in the context of CSPro's data entry platform, and if I want to use a tablet, that I will have to modify the 'start' item in the dictionary or clicking 'insert item' and re-entering the information. Is this the best way to edit the positioning of a large number of item entries, or is there a way to manually manipulate the positioning that is more intuitive (copy/paste or drag and drop)?

Thanks!
josh
Posts: 2399
Joined: May 5th, 2014, 12:49 pm
Location: Washington DC

Re: Editing positioning of data dictionary items

Post by josh »

The order of the items in the dictionary does not dictate the order in which the questions are asked. The order the questions are asked, on both Windows and on the tablet, is the order that the fields are displayed in the forms tree. This is the tree on the left hand side of the window containing yellow form icons and green field icons that is shown when you are in forms mode. You can reorder the items in the forms tree by dragging them around. This is the easiest way to set the order the questions are asked.

Note that the dictionary is purely the layout of the items in the data file, not the order the questions are asked. You will often need to adjust the lengths of the items in the dictionary to get the correct number of digits you want for a field but you almost never need to adjust the start positions.
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