[DDI-users] representing modules in DDI3.0

Bart Orriens bart.orriens at gmail.com
Wed Aug 5 21:59:04 EDT 2009


Hi all,

first of all thanks a lot to everyone that replied to my earlier emails on
usage of multiple language and availability of style sheets.

Going slowly through the specs I ran into a few questions that hopefully
someone can help me with:

1) in the surveys I am interested in representing the concept of module is
used,
which is basically a collection of questions. How would I best represent
that in
DDI? I couldn't find an explicit module concept, so my initial thought was
to do something like:

<QuestionItem>
  <SubQuestions>
     <QuestionReference>...</QuestionReference>
  </SubQuestions>
</QuestionItem>

However, then I realized that according to the datacollection.xsd schema you

can only include full question item definitions under a subquestions tag.
This would be kind of inefficient, since in many cases questions will be
reused
across multiple modules in my surveys.

Am I missing something or misinterpreting the spec?


2) In the survey routing I have instances in which multiple questions are
presented together to be asked at the same time. The exact questions asked
can be dependent on conditions, looping, etc. I could not find a direct way
of representing this in the routing options provided by DDI. I considered
making a multiple-item question and include that in the routing definition,
but that would not allow me to capture the presence/absence of
certain questions based on aforementioned conditions/looping/etc.

A sequence would be incorrect as well. Basically i would need a
parallel control construct that conveys questions being asked at the same
time.
As far as I can see though such concept does not exist.
Any thoughts, suggestions would be very welcome.


Thanks for any insight that anyone can provide!

Cheers,
Bart
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