Qualitative Pages

Qualitative pages enable users to create questions where participants will be answering by using a qualitative scale. These pages can be used to validate a set of elements like indicators, criteria, strategies or policies. From this point on, let’s assume you need to ask your participants to validate a set of indicators using a likert scale.

Delphi Qualitative (fixed scale) page example for initial round as seen from participants

Each round can have as many qualitative (fixed scale) pages as you want, but in each page the qualitative scale is fixed.

Please note that if you have setup a qualitative page in a previous round, you can only edit some details for that page on later rounds. More on this below.

Qualitative questions

The toolbox on the left side of the page will allow you to set up some of the qualitative page elements before adding your indicators (questions). On this toolbox you can do one of the following:

1 – Define your question

In qualitative like Delphi pages, you may need to have a statement or a question setting the basis for the participants work. This text will be visible at the top of the page just above the table holding your indicators.


Please keep in mind that you can always use the Survey page to provide instructions in earlier pages so try to make your question as short as possible.

2 – Define custom indicators fields

To provide your participants with further information about each indicator, you may create your own fields. Imagine you want to sort your indicators by area or type. An indicator can have several custom fields, which you can create to add any information about your indicators. Using this fields, you can then change the layout of your questionnaire automatically. When setting up a custom field, you can change the layout as follows (see image below):

  • Group indicators, making each different group to appear in its own page in your questionnaire. To do this, choose “Group all the indicators with the same value in this field”.
  • Subgroup indicators, creating different sections in each group page. To do this, choose “Subgroup all the indicators with the same value in this field”.
  • Create a new column (before the answer scale) with this detail. This means that you will be able to show some extra info about the indicator right after its name, in a specific column.

If you don’t want to use the field values to group indicators, select the option “Don’t use this field to group indicators”. Note that you can only select one field to group indicators and one to subgroup them in each qualitative page. Every field can be edited or deleted.

Whenever you choose to use your custom indicator fields to change the layout of your questionnaire (by choosing one of the first to options mentioned, this will be reflected on the list of indicators on the right side of this page (see example below).

3 – Define the scale

To set your scale just add the possible levels each participant can use to answer the question. You can delete each level, edit it or drag and drop to change the order of appearance the levels of the scale. You may decide to run an open round, where participants can add further indicators, in which case Welphi will ignore the scale.

Finally, you can add the indicators to your page just by clicking on the “add Indicators” button. Each indicator must have a name and can have a description (see figure XX). In case you have created custom fields, you may now set their values for this indicator. Note that, you can always re-order the indicators list, edit the indicators’ name, fields and description whenever you want.

 

Follow-up rounds

Once all your participants have finished answering or when you have reached a deadline, you can quickly set up a follow up round just by clicking the “Add new round” button on the home page. This will automatically create a copy of the previous round with all pages and elements as before.  On this new round you can only make  changes to some elements of this page:  you can delete some of the indicators, change their names, description and value fields or add new indicators.

 

Open round type

In some cases, you may which to allow your participants to add new indicators to the list you have set up. To do this, just check the “participants can add new indicators” box and a new button will be showed on the questionnaire where participants can click to add indicators to the list.

Please note that when you decide to run an open round, Welphi will ignore whatever scale you may have set up. Since you may want to use that scale in later rounds, Welphi will not delete your scale levels but just ignore them.