Manipulate Automatic Reports showed how to add messages to the default report which is automatically generated after a run. This type of report may be useful for debugging, but in general, the subject-matter staff responsible for edit review will usually prefer a more "user-friendly" report - that is, one that presents the information in a format dictated by the users.
Such a "custom" report can be generated by using the
write function. This command will put the information you want where you want it in your report. For example, for each questionnaire, you'll want to know the
identifying ID values. If this were a population census, the case ID would likely be composed of levels of geography [Province, District, Village, EA, etc.] attached to a household identification. The
errmsg command could display the IDs as follows:
Case [010117100110870031] has 12 messages (0 E / 0 W / 12U)
As you can see, this may be difficult for the non-programmer to decipher. But by using the
write command, you can more clearly display this. One way would be to put the following
write statements in the
preproc of the first level (in this way it would only get written out once per questionnaire):
After the execution of the program, the .wrt [report] file would show the following (of course, actual values will vary depending on the questionnaire IDs):
***************
Province: 1
District: 7
Village : 30
EA : 4
***************
Additional
write statements can be included in the batch edit program to generate a customized report.