UserGuides:Surveys

Viewing surveys
A survey in methodbox has one or more datasets (these can be CSV files, spreadsheets etc) and each of these surveys belongs to a survey type. They are displayed in a tabular view on the surveys index page. The table can be sorted alphabetically by clicking on the appropriate table header. Each survey title is a link to a page showing their details, click on them for more information. Each individual dataset for a survey can be shown by clicking the arrow next to the survey title and expanding the table.

Searching for variables
Once you have selected all the surveys/datasets you need you can then enter a search term in the box and click the button. To search them for variables (think of a variable as being a column in one of these datasets) you select one or more datasets, enter a search term in the survey search box and click the button, as shown in this diagram. Once MethodBox has found variables matching your criteria it will show them to you

What search terms to use
MethodBox uses apache solr as its search engine. The search syntax is described in detail here.

The basic syntax is: '+' and '-' characters are treated as "mandatory" and "prohibited" modifiers for the subsequent terms. Text wrapped in balanced quote characters '"' are treated as phrases, any query containing an odd number of quote characters is evaluated as if there were no quote characters at all. Wildcards are not supported.

Selecting individual datasets
When you click on the checkbox next to survey name this selects all of its datasets for searching. By clicking the arrows next to the survey name it shows you all the datasets for that survey and you can then select them individually.

Survey Table
The survey table is the default way to find Surveys but you can also use other methods.

By searching
You can also search for surveys by entering a search term in the box in the middle of the MethodBox header bar, selecting 'surveys' from the drop down box and clicking on the 'go' button.