Question Types

text

Use for questions that require a text response. It can also be used with the numbers appearance to get integer responses that are longer than the 9 character limit of the integer type.

Type

text

Parameters:

• rows: Set the number of rows of text shown in the form

Appearances:

• numbers: Shows the numeric keyboard
• thousands-sep: Inserts a separator between thousands when “numbers” is also used
• hidden: Hide the widget in fieldTask

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: yes

Example

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
text	comment	Any comments?

Text widget with 5 rows

note

Type

note

A read only note to the user.

Notes can be used to provide guidance to the user. This could some simple text that is specified in the survey template. For example:

The following questions are about health

However they can also be dynamically constructed to provide context sensitive help. To do this use the ${question_name} syntax within the label of the note. The question referred to can be a calculate that creates the text by combining answers from multiple questions.

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	calculation
text	name	What is your name?
calculate	calculate_guidance		concat(‘Tell ‘, ${name}, ‘ that they are doing well’)
note	guidance	${calculate_guidance}

integer

Number questions that don’t allow a decimal point and are not longer than 9 digits.

Type

integer

Appearances:

• thousands-sep: Inserts a separator between thousands
• hidden: Hide the widget in fieldTask

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: yes

Example

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
integer	age	What is your age?

decimal

Number question with a decimal point. Decimal questions are limited to 14 digits plus the decimal point. You can use a text question with the numbers appearance if you need more.

Type

decimal

Appearances:

• thousands-sep: Inserts a separator between thousands

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: yes

Example

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
decimal	cost	How much did it cost?

bearing

A bearing widget captures the compass reading and stores it as a decimal type.

Type

decimal

Required Appearance:

• bearing

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: no

Example

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	appearance
decimal	orientation	Record the orientation	bearing

Bearing

date, time and datetime

Default date type

Type

date

Availability:

FieldTask: yes Webforms: yes

Example

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
date	birthdate	When were you born?

Default Date type

Date widget with spinner input

A more compact date widget that makes it easy to select dates that are far from the current (or default) date.

Type

date

Appearance:

no-calendar

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	appearance
date	birthdate	When were you born?	no-calendar

Default Date type

Month and year only

Only records the month and the year.

Type

date

Appearance:

month-year

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	appearance
date	birth_month	What month were you born?	month-year

Year only

Only records the year.

Type

date

Appearance:

year

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	appearance
date	birth_year	What year were you born?	year

Date widgets with non-Gregorian calendars

Note

The non-Gregorian calendar is used only on input. The dates are then converted and stored as standard Gregorian dates

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: no

Bikram Sambat calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

bikram-sambat

Coptic calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

coptic

Ethiopian calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

ethiopian

Islamic calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

islamic

Myanmar calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

myanmar

Persian calendar

Type

date

Appearance:

persian

Time widget

Records the time of day.

Note

The time is stored along with the time zone. Hence a point in time is recorded. If you record a time of 10:00 am in London then the value is the same as 8pm in Sydney. If someone in Sydney generates a report using their local timezone then they will see the result as 8pm.

If you want to record a local time then you can use an integer type or decimal type or a select_one type that has a list of valid times. A question like “What time did the parcel arrive?” could be recorded with or without timezone depending on how you want to analyse the data.

Type

time

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
time	arrived	What time did the parcel arrive?

Datetime widget

Records the date and time

Type

dateTime

Appearance:

no-calendar

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
dateTime	started	When did you start the project?

Image

Default image widget

Type

image

Captures an image either using the camera or by selecting from the device gallery.

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
image	picture_of_tree	Take a picture of the tree

Image with annotation

Draw on an image after it has been captured. An additional button labelled “Markup Image” is shown that is enabled after the image is captured.

Type

image

Appearance:

annotate

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label
image	damage	Take a photo and circle the damage

Annotate Type

Image as a drawing

Type

image

Appearance:

draw

This is similar to annotate except the user draws on a blank canvas.

Survey Worksheet

type	name	label	appearance
image	draw_farm_layout	Draw a plan of the farm

Image as a signature

Type

image

Appearance:

signature

Allows the user to draw a signature of their name.

table

type	name	label	appearance
image	hh_signature	Ask houeholder to sign the screen	signature

Other Image appearances and parameters

Require a new image

The default behavour is to include a button that allows the user to select an existing image rather than taking a new one. However by adding the appearance “new” the user is requried to capture a new image.

Self portrait (selfie) image

The back camera on the phone is used by default (although the user can change this). However by setting the appearance “new-front” the front camera is used by default to capture a selfie.

Note

selfie can also be used as the appearance.

Reducing the size of images

The size can be reduced by specifying the maximum length of the longest side of the image using max-pixels. For example if the default picture size is 1,000 by 500 and you specify the max-pixels to be 200, then the image will be resized to 200 by 100 pixels.

In the parameters column add max-pixels= followed by the maximum length of the long edge in pixels.

Note

The proportions of the image are maintained and if the length of the longest side was less than max-pixels the image will not be changed.

Acknowledge / Trigger

type

trigger or acknowledge

You can use a type of either trigger or acknowlwdge, they work the same way. A single checkbox is shwown which the user can “acknowledge” by checking it. If they do this then the answer stored for the question is “OK”.

You can use the above answer in relevance for following questions. For example:

${ack} = 'OK'

Commonly select_one questions with yes/no choices are used instead of Acknowledge

survey

type	name	label	relevance
acknowledge	ack	Select to confirm participation
text	name	What is your name?	${ack} = ‘OK’

Acknowledge widget in fieldTask

In WebForms a radio button is used instead of a checkbox.

Acknowledge widget in WebForms

Chart

Type

chart

Shows a chart in the survey. Settings for the graph are specified in the question parameters. More details are available in Charts

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: no

Child Form / Parent Form

Type

child_form, parent_form

Launches another survey from within the current survey. The difference between these is in how the data from the two surveys are linked in the results database. If you don’t care about linking the data between the two surveys then either type will do. Detailed information on using these question types is available in Launch a Survey from inside a Survey.

Availability:

• FieldTask: yes
• Webforms: no

Matrix

The begin matrix type is a convenient way to show questions in a matrix structure using webforms.

Matrix Widget

To create the matrix, group the questions that will appear horizontally, however instead of using begin group/end group use begin matrix/end matrix. Because these questions are appearing horizontally there will be a limit to how many you can fit on the screen comfortably.

Then specify the rows of the matrix in a choice list in the choices worksheet. Put the name of the choice list used by the matrix in the “list name” column of the survey worsheet. As these choices create the rows of the matrix you can add as many as you like and the matrix will simply extend down the page.

Finally in the settings sheet, under “style” add “theme-grid”.

When you load the survey onto the server additional questions will be created in groups. One group for each of the choices and a group for the header. Hence the matrix type is not a real type as it is converted into multiple other questions on upload.

Type

begin matrix, end matrix

Example

Survey Sheet:

type	name	label	list name
begin matrix	nutrition	items	food_groups
select_one yn	available	Available
integer	quantity	Quantity
text	comment	Comment
end matrix

Choices Sheet:

list_name	name	label
food_groups	vegetables	Vegetables
food_groups	protein	Protein
food_groups	fruit	Fruit
food_groups	dairy	Dairy
food_groups	sugar	Fats and sugar
yn	yes	yes
yn	no	no

Example Form

Availability:

• FieldTask: no
• Webforms: yes
• XLSForm: yes
• Online Editor: no

Other ODK Question types

• select and select_one
• rank
• geopoint, geotrace and geoshape
• audio
• video
• file upload
• barcode
• range