8.3 Answer Quoting

The texts of questions may be modified dynamically to fit each respondent's situation. An example would be the question

``Is the telephone number `1234 5678' the correct number to ring?''

The telephone number for the current respondent needs to be inserted into the above question. This is done by inserting the values of a variable containing the relevant information into the question text. This process is called answer-quoting. Any items can be quoted as long as they occur earlier in the script than the item that quotes it. Even items that do not produce a visible output⁵ can also be quoted in later items.

To quote an item, it is simply a matter of inserting the name of the item to be quoted and surrounding it between two carets (^^). For example, to quote Q1, insert ^Q1^ into the question text. This even works in IVR interviews where the spoken answer can be dynamically modified.

An example of answer-quoting is shown in Figure 21. The first item named Q2 has a series of textual options ``Beer or ale'', ``Wine'', ``Spirits'' with corresponding codes, 1, 2, 3. In the next item, Q3, the question text quotes the answer from Q2 by means of the inserted text ^Q2^. If the respondent had answered ``Wine'' the answer would have been recorded as code `2'. When Q3 is displayed on the screen the value for Q2 is retrieved and formatted as ``Wine''. The question that appears on the screen will then be:

``When you drink Wine, about how many glasses
would you have in one session?''

Figure 21: Example of answer-quoting.

Apart from quoting script items, predefined system quotes can also be used. These are shown in Table 6.

Table 6: CATI System quotes.

Script text	Displayed value
^_INTVR_^	The name of the current interviewer
^_TITLE_^	The survey's title
^_STATUS_^	The current status of the interview
^_PHONE_^	The respondent's telephone number
^_RNAME_^	The respondent's name

Answer-quoting can also be used to insert data from external data sets into a question text. This is done in conjunction with LINK items⁶ that are used to import the data. The linked value can then be quoted in any later item. An example would be quoting an answer from a previous interview.

Arithmetic operations may be done on quoted numeric values. For example, the quoted value ^QA-3^ subtracts 3 from the value of QA before inserting the result into the question text.