Ideally, you will not have to make changes to your survey once you have begun interviewing (see warnings below). However, the reality is that you will often be asked to make changes. Most every change to your project involves modifying the project locally on your hard drive, and uploading updated files to the Web server. If you use the automatic upload capability (Field | Upload Study Files) SSI Web will only upload the files that have been affected by your local changes.
Even though SSI Web makes it easy to upload changes, don't get lulled into thinking that any change you make to your project after fielding has begun is OK. The warnings listed below still apply, since it is possible for respondents currently taking the survey to be temporarily disrupted by your accessing and modifying files on the server. Also, more importantly, some changes you can make to your survey pose no problems for later analysis; but, some changes you might make can cause a great deal of trouble later. Please see the section below entitled Common Survey Changes.
If you are using the manual upload method with your own FTP software, then you first prepare the project files for web upload (Field | Upload Study Files | Create Web Upload Folder for Manual Upload). In that case, we recommend uploading just a few selected files that have modified (but not typically the entire project).
Warnings
Making any change to the project files on your internet server will potentially disrupt respondents as they are taking the survey. If, for example, you upload a new questionnaire file (STUDYNAMEqst.cgi) to replace the existing questionnaire file on your server, the file will be locked for a short period of time (usually less than a second). If a respondent hits the Next button to submit responses on a survey page during the time when the STUDYNAMEqst.cgi file is locked, an error message will be displayed when the browser requests the next page (the data submitted from the previous page will not be lost). If, after seeing the server error page, the respondent clicks the refresh button or the back button on the browser, the survey will resume. Nonetheless, it is concerning that respondents can be potentially receive a server error. To reduce this likelihood, we suggest you make changes during a low traffic time.
Before making any change, it is a good idea to download any data that have been collected to this point through the Admin Module. That way, if you accidentally do something to delete your data, you have a backup.
Make sure not to delete accidentally the existing /Data directory on your server, or you will lose all your data. Also, do not delete any files or folders that have been created automatically by the software on the server.
Common Survey Changes
1. Changing Text Only: Sometimes, you've made a typographical error, or you need to modify the text in your survey. You can edit the survey locally on your hard drive to make the change. Click Field | Upload Study Files to make the change on the server. If using the manual method to upload files to the server, click Field | Upload Study Files | Create Web Upload Folder for Manual Upload to prepare new files for uploading to the server. These files are saved to a folder on your hard drive within your study folder called /Web Upload. For this change in the questionnaire, the *only file that needs to be uploaded to the server is the STUDYNAMEqst.cgi file (within the /Admin directory). Copy the STUDYNAMEqst.cgi file from the /Admin folder on your hard drive to the /Admin directory within your study's server installation (overwriting the existing file). Test the survey (following the instructions below) to ensure that your survey has been updated properly.
* If the text change involves the "Start" question (or other questions on page 1), then you will also need to upload a new STUDYNAMElogin.html file to the root study directory on the server.
2. Changing Skip Patterns (follow same instructions as Changing Text Only).
3. Adding a Question: When you add a question, any respondents who did not receive this question will be marked as "missing" for the new variable. Follow the same instructions as Changing Text Only.
4. Changing a Question Name: This is problematic, as the new survey layout will not contain the variable name for the early respondents who completed the questionnaire prior to the change. If you must make this change, you can put the original question on a new page with an unconditional skip. That way, you will be able to export the data from the original question name and the new question name separately. To upload the changes, follow the same instructions as Changing Text Only.
5. Changing a Question Type: Sometimes, users may need to change the question type from Text to Numeric. This poses a problem for data export, and you may not be able to export the data prior to making the change if you do this. Therefore, we suggest the same remedy as Changing a Question Name above.
7. Changing Administrative Passwords (the passwords you use to access the Online Administrative Module): Open your project using SSI Web, locally on your hard drive. Click Compose | Survey Settings + Server Settings tab to access and modify your Administrative Access passwords. Click Field | Upload Study Files to make the change on the server. If using the manual method to upload files to the server, click Field | Upload Study Files | Create Web Upload Folder for Manual Upload to prepare new files for uploading to the server. These files are saved to a folder on your hard drive within your study folder called /Web Upload. For this change, the only file that needs to be uploaded to the server is the STUDYNAMEpacc.cgi file (within the /Admin directory). Copy the STUDYNAMEpacc.cgi file from the /Admin folder on your hard drive to the /Admin directory within your study's server installation (overwriting the existing file).
Testing Your Survey after the Change
The Admin Module includes a Test Survey capability that lets you enter a mirror image of your survey as a respondent (but your test data are not mixed with the real data). You should do this to ensure that the change you made has taken properly on the server installation, and that you haven't somehow disabled your study.
