Home / Worksheet 55

Turning a single response question into a slider

You can insert a draggable Slider Control as a way of representing single-response questions on screen. Respondents drag the slider to the position representing their response.

QD: sample slider as on questionnaire page

The Slider Control consists of:

a set of images (the bar itself, the slider, the scale markers on the bar and an associated image for each question code such as smiley faces or dials that give more information)
the position of those images
the number of codes
the way the Slider Control behaves.

These are stored together in an .sld file.

The Slider Control tool includes templates for horizontal and vertical bars. You can also create your own Slider Control from your own bar and slider images.

The templates provided are grayscale. This means that you can easily tint them with a color of your choice (colorise them).

Background

The templates allow you to include an image for each question code, which is displayed instead of the Snap code label. You can decide whether to display images, the Snap code labels (the text associated with a given response) or nothing at all. If you choose to display the code labels, they are displayed when the respondent moves the slider, showing them what that position on the Slider Control means.

This worksheet shows how to convert an existing single response rating question in your questionnaire to a Slider Control and color it. It doesn't matter how many possible responses are in your rating question, the template will adapt to have the correct number of points.

Summary of steps

Step 1: Add a single-response question to your questionnaire

Step 2: Set it to display as a Slider Control

Steps 3–6: Select a Slider Control template to use and colorise it

Step 7: Save your changes

Applying the slider

In the questionnaire window, select the single-response question that you wish to turn into a Slider Control. This worksheet uses a simple ten-point rating scale.
Select Show in the toolbar topics, then select As Slider Control in the drop-down list, and check the Show box.
The questionnaire window changes to display a grey box for the question (if a Slider Control has been previously defined for this question, that Slider Control will be displayed).
Click the [Slider control] button or double-click the Slider Control area to open the Slider Control wizard. The existing Slider Control templates will be displayed. The default templates show five code positions, but this will be changed to fit the number of codes that exist in your question.
Select the one you wish to use. It will appear in preview mode in a new window, showing the correct number of codes. You can move the Slider Control in the preview window to see how it looks at different settings.
Since the templates are grayscale, you can change their color easily by colorising them. Click the Colourize template button to display the color palette.
Select a color. The new version of the template is displayed in the preview window.
When you have the Slider Control you want, click [OK]. A fixed image of the slider will be displayed in the questionnaire. The slider will be usable when you publish your questionnaire.