How to add two checkboxes to one field name?

[mrayn]

Hi Everyone,

I am creating a database in Access to analyze job announcements. I am identifying skills mentioned in the posting, and I must also tag the skills as required or preferred.

What I have done so far:
I have created a table with the listed skills and have assigned each skill a yes/no data type. I have also created a form from this table that displays the skill and next to it, a checkbox. When I check the box, it will signify that the skill was mentioned in the job posting, but it does not convey whether the skill is required or preferred.

What I need:
Now, I need to add another checkbox to each skill so that I can check whether the skill is required or preferred. I think I need two checkboxes to accomplish this, but I'm not sure how to add a second one and attach it to the specific skill.

Any ideas? Ideally, it would be nice to create a table of the listed skills, and I could go through each skill and place a check in a required or preferred column.

Thanks for any advice in advance!
Marina

 

[Minty]

It may be better to have a store a number or text against the field rather than a check box, think of it as a SkillRequirementLevel
Then store 1 for required, 2 for preferred, 3 for nice if you have it, 4 Wow! etc. If you then think of another required status you can simply add another number / text to reflect this. I would store them in a separate table that you can use as the source of a drop down - Don't use a lookup field in your table - they are the devil's work...

 

[MarkK]

It seems to me that whether a skill is required or preferred is not directly a function of the skill, but it is also a comment on the particular position. Structurally therefore, this information belongs in a table that is related to both the skill AND the position.

tSkill
SkillID (PK)
SkillName

tPosition
PositionID (PK)
PositionName

tPositionSkill
PositionSkillID (PK)
PositionID (FK)
SkillID (FK)
Required
Preferred

And Minty makes a good point too, that you could use a numeric value to scale the degree of the requirement, and thereby express it in a single field, rather than multiple check boxes

 

[Galaxiom]

[B]tPositionSkill
[/B]PositionSkillID (PK)
PositionID (FK)
SkillID (FK)
Required
Preferred

Note that this would be a normalization error unless the skill can be both Required and Preferred at the same time.

If it cannot be both, then Minty's advice is the way to go.