Forms and Surveys

Surveys & forms

Testable can host full questionnaires alongside experimental trials. Survey rows use type = form and a set of columns that control the question text, response type, and layout.

Anatomy of a form row

Column	Purpose
type	Set to form
head	Question title
body	Sub-text or additional context, rendered as smaller text under the title
responseType	How the participant answers
responseOptions	Available answer choices

Question types

The responseType column picks the question widget (box, comment, radio, likert, checkboxes, dropdown, slider, stars, rank), and responseOptions supplies the answer choices. Every question type, plus answer options, matrices (responseRows), option randomisation, “Other” options, and required answers, is covered in Survey Response Types.

Pages and layout

Consecutive form rows are gathered onto one survey page. A page always ends when the next trial is not a form; within a run of form rows, these columns control the layout:

Column	Effect
pageBreak	1 (or after) ends the page after this row; before ends it after the previous form row
pageName	Sets the heading of the page this row belongs to
separator	Any non-empty value draws a horizontal divider line after this question

type,head,responseType,responseOptions,pageBreak
form,Q1,radio,Yes;No,
form,Q2,radio,Yes;No,
form,Q3,radio,Yes;No,1
form,Q4,box,,
form,Q5,box,,

Q1 to Q3 render on page 1 (break after Q3); Q4 and Q5 render on page 2 (the page ends because no form row follows).

A few things to keep in mind:

• With pageBreak, any unrecognised value (including 0) is treated as after, so leave the cell blank to mean “no break”.
• Questions generated from a dynamic list all come from one spreadsheet row; use pageBreak = afterAll to break after the last generated question.
• Each page has a single forward button, and there is no back navigation between survey pages. By default the button reads NEXT, or FINISH on the last page; a button1 value on the last row of the page overrides the label.

See the pageBreak column page for the full token list and its interactions with randomisation and timers.

Displaying images in surveys

Use the stim / stim2 / stim3 columns exactly as in experimental trials to show images or other media alongside a question.

Scoring survey responses

Add a score column to assign a numeric value to each response option:

score = 1;2;3;4;5

Values are semicolon-separated and mapped to responseOptions in order. The total score across all form trials is computed and available in results.

Multiple scores

Prefix scores with a letter label for multiple independent score dimensions:

score = A:1;2;3; B:3;2;1

Next steps

• Survey Response Types: every question type and its answer options
• Generating Questions from Lists: populate options or questions from a list
• Using Variables: embed dynamic content in question text
• How to Read the Results Files: find survey responses in your data