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A multi-coded question is one that has a list of possible responses and more than one response is allowed for each respondent.
A multi-coded question may have up to 9999 responses.
Unless the responses are stored in individual locations you will need to specify the width (number of data locations).
•Width 1 will allow up to 9 responses
•Width 2 will allow up to 99 responses
•Width 3 will allow up to 999 responses
•Width 4 will allow up to 9999 responses
Unless the responses are stored in individual locations you will also need to specify the maximum number of responses per respondent. The number of data locations needed is the width times the maximum number of responses per respondent.
The response numbers selected are stored in the data file for each record.
The program will only allow up to specified number of responses to be selected.
A data check report will error multi-coded questions with too many answers.
Note that "Zero fill" and "Fixed response locations" are set globally for the whole project.
If "Zero fill" is set then vacant sets of columns (not used by selected responses) will be set to zero unless the whole entry is empty (no responses selected) in which case all the columns will be left blank.
In a character raw data file the multi-coded responses will be stored as follows:
If "Individual locations" is set then a "1" is stored in the location set for each response.
If both "Individual locations" and "Fixed response locations" are not set then the responses are stored as response numbers (also call a spread field). Each selected response number is stored in the next available set of columns.
If "Individual locations" is not set and "Fixed response locations" is set then the responses are stored as response numbers (also call a spread field). Each response number is stored in the set of columns reserved for that response. "Refused" responses in questions are not allocated a set of columns. To reserve a space for an unused response use "Suspend" instead of "Refuse".
This is the same as a character raw data file except that individual locations can use up to 10 or 12 codes in the same column.