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The CAQDD (Computer Assisted Questionnaire and Dataset Developer) is a research tool developed by Sociometrics for social scientists. The software is intended to greatly facilitate questionnaire writing, data set development, and documentation by automating tasks that can best be done by computer. It improves questionnaire creation and documentation by providing a structure and format that is both complete and of high quality; and it eliminates much of the post data-collection effort of documenting a data set for public use by other researchers.
The software performs the following functions:
In a typical social science research project, researchers must devote much of their time and resources to developing and documenting survey questions (or instruments). This involves drafting and revising questionnaires or interview forms; generating codebooks; entering and checking data; and creating analysis files for such programs as SAS or SPSS. Much of this work is repetitive. In addition, considerable effort must be spent in formatting the questionnaires, codebooks, and set-up files. Additionally, social science investigators who collect original data are increasingly being asked by their sponsors and other researchers to share their data sets with other researchers. Data sharing requires a standard of documentation that is not often adhered to by researchers who develop data sets for their own use.
The CAQDD software simplifies the entire process of questionnaire creation, data entry and analysis. It permits the investigator to enter information only once into a database. The program then draws on this database to generate a questionnaire; create the corresponding variable and value labels, codebooks, as well as SPSS and SAS set-up files to read in the data once it is entered. In addition, the program creates a a file map and checks data files for errors. The database will be fully editable, permitting the user to modify, update, correct, or restructure the study (by reordering questions or sections) at any time.
For example, to create questions for the questionnaire, the user enters information about each question into the CAQDD database through what is known as the Question Window. This information is used by the software for both formatting the question in the questionnaire, documenting the question in the codebook, as well as creating a corresponding variable in the eventual data set.
Question Window
Following is a sample multi-item question as formatted by the software program. The program is able to generate fully formatted questions of five types: fixed response, fill in, open ended, multi-item (illustrated), and roster. The latter is a series of questions that are repeated for each of two or more events or instances. Examples are household rosters and pregnancy histories.
Likewise, for entering data, the user will use the Data Handler Window.
Data entry through data handler has several advantages over entering data through spreadsheets. First, because the questions appear exactly as they would in the questionnaire, the process of data entry is made faster and more accurate. But the biggest advantage of the data handler is in minimizing errors during data entry. The data handler prevents the researcher from entering invalid values as it forces the user to choose only the values assigned to the question, including the values assigned to missing cases.
Once the user has entered data, the user can update information on any of the individual cases or respondents by going to the Response List Window, which lists all the respondents in the dataset. The user can select the case for which information needs to be modified or updated, and make the necessary changes.
Respondent List Window
The Computer Assisted Questionnaire and Dataset Developer also includes an item (or question) bank. The item bank consists of several thousand commonly used questionnaire items, scales, and other interviewing tools from the field of family research. While developing a questionnaire, the software's item bank allows a researcher to be able to search the items in the bank, select those of use for the research purpose at hand, and drop them directly into the questionnaire being developed. The items have been drawn from the premier data sets in the family field. Although primarily beneficial to family researchers, the item bank consists of a broad range of general questions, and can be used by social scientists focusing on other areas besides family. Questions in the item bank cover a diverse range of topics such as crime and delinquency, sexuality, substance abuse, mental and physical health, educational and employment history etc. At present, the item bank has over 8000 questions.
CAQDD is presented with two licensing options:
If you are interested in previewing the software you can download a fully functional demo version for free. You will be given 30 days from the date of installation to use the software. After 30 days, if you wish to continue using the software you will need to purchase either a one-year or an unlimited use license, and will be given a license code to access the software. Please call our order line, 800-846-3475 to purchase the software and get your license code. Click Here to Download the CAQDD Demo (approx 25.5MB)
The software is currently priced at $149 for a One-Year license and $745 for the Unlimited Use version.
For questions regarding the software, please contact:
Shobana Raghupathy, Ph.D. 650 949 3282 *209 (ph)
650 949 3299 (fax)
shobana@socio.com
