Access as a research tool, not a database

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hellaby
  • Start date Start date
H

Hellaby

Guest
I have a research project. I need to capture numerical values from a scroll bar into a table so they can be used to produce excel charts. I can capture the data no problem, my problem is how to present it in a user friendly format - a form.

I have to capture the following data via a form for each research respondent:
Name
Age
Sex
Occupation

Each respondent is then asked to rank five brands against seven different attributes. In format terms, my researcher wants to display one attribute at the top of a page with five brands listed underneath with the slider beside each brand. For example:

"The Worst IT Information" is the attribute at the page top
"Microsoft" is the brand, with a slider beside it so the resondent can select how much they associate/rank this attribute with Microsoft.
"Adobe" is the second brand with slider
"PaintShop Pro" is the third brand with slider
"Corel" is the fourth brand with slider
"Sage" is the fifth brand with slider

The same respondent then clicks to the next page which has a new attribute at the top, but with the same five brands underneath to rank the attribute against.

eg "full of bugs" is the attribute at the page top
brands and sliders are all as above

There are seven pages in all. At the end of the data collection I need to be able to find the average ranking for each brand against each attribute and apply the demographic information, for example

Microsoft had an average ranking of 7 out of 10 against the attribute "Worst IT INformation" against women 30Plus.

I can't figure out how to do this without collecting the information into tables called PageOne, PageTwo, PageThree, PageFour, PageFive, PageSix, Page Seven and using fields like: brand 1 (text), brand 1 (value), brand 2, (text) brand 2, (value). This seems to fly in the face of how you would normally create a table and will require queries to add together all the values gathered using different fields.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where I might be going wrong?
 
1 table i think. I expect someone to shout at me now about normalization but...

So long as you make none of the fields in the table "required" (and give them some appropriate defaults) then you could have 7 forms all feeding off of the same table but in each case showing different fields from that table. I have done something not too disimilar and it worked fine.

You will then be able to build appropriate queries from that i imagine...

Bobadopolis
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a go and see what happens!
Hellaby
 
I would start with a minimum of 3 tables. Respondant..... ie.. (PK)RespondantID, Name,age,sex,occupation, SoftwareID(FK)... Second for your software... (PK)Software ID, software name,(FK)RatingID... Third for your rating... (PK)RatingID, rating value.

I think you'll be able to work with this stucture much easier then one table.
 
1. Please do not create multiple posts on the same topic. I have deleted several of them already.
2. Search the archives for posts on surveys and questionaires. At the moment you are committing "spreadsheet". You need to modify your approach and normalize the tables. The posts your search will turn up will contain suggested table schemas.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom