A Generic Editor and Tools for Questionnaires

 GenEdit
Team 
  • Martina Osztovits
     
  • Silvia Miksch, Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive System, Vienna, Austria and
    Danube University Krems, Department of Information and Knowledge Engineering, Krems, Austria
     
  • Klaus Hinum, Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive System, Vienna, Austria
     
    		•
    Contact Person  Martina Osztovis
     
    Project 

    In this master thesis a generic editor for questionnaires together with some useful add-on tools suitable for many different applications was designed and developed. This generic editor is able to manage any questionnaires which collect time-oriented, highly structured data regardless of a specific problem. The questionnaires are generated during run-time on demand using various configuration files for the start-up of a specific application. This also requires to distinguish between structural data, measurement data and parameter sources. Structural information covers the parameter definitions, whilst measurement data are concrete observed values and parameter sources are e.g. patients answering clinical questionnaires. Therefore, the generic editor must be able to perform three basic tasks, which are

    1. Recording Measurement Data (see Figure 1 below)
    2. Designing Forms (see Figure 2 below)
    3. Maintenance of Parameter Sources

    Tools are provided for importing and exporting data, starting an external program, and displaying basic statistical values. The implementation aims at being as general as possible to be useful for as many problems as possible.

    Although the editor is designed to be of general use, its main field of operation is during a study about anorectic girls. So, the generic editor is finally demonstrated on the case of questionnaires used during a clinical trial which takes place at the Department of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the Medical University of Vienna. This psychotherapeutic study analyses alternative therapeutic processes of anorectic girls by collecting a huge amount of highly structured time-oriented data through questionnaires. The generic editor should simplify the management of the questionnaires as well as the collection the data necessary for this study.
     
    Papers  Master Thesis (PDF, 1,15MB)
     
    Downloads  Sources (ZIP, 155 KB)
    Executable and Example Configuration File (ZIP, 880 KB)
     
    Images  To retrieve an enlarged version of the images, click on them:
     

    Figure 1: Record/Check Data Task:
    Recording of measurement data (JPG, 100KB)

     
    Figure2: Design Form Task:
    Definition of parameters (JPG, 255KB)

     
    Related Work 
    1. H. Herzog: Multiple View Framework for Exploring Highly Structured Data, Master Thesis, Vienna, October 2004
    2. K. Hinum, S. Miksch, W. Aigner, S. Ohmann, C. Popow, M. Pohl, M. Rester: Gravi++: Interactive Information Visualization of Highly Structured Temporal Data; Talk: Workshop IDAMAP 2005 Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology (IDAMAP 2005), Aberdeen, Schottland; 07-24-2005; in Workshop IDAMAP 2005 Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology, (2005), 67 - 72.
    3. K. Hinum: Gravi++ - An Interactive Information Visualization for High Dimensional, Temporal Data, PhD thesis, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology, Favoritenstrasse 9-11/186, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
    4. M. Lanzenberger, The Stardinates - Visualizing Highly Structured Data, In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information Visualization (IV'03), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 47-52, 2003.
    5. M. Lanzenberger, The Interactive Stardinates - An Information Visualization Technique Applied in a Multiple View System PhD thesis, Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Science and Informatics, 2003.
    6. M. Lanzenberger, S. Miksch, and M. Pohl. Exploring Highly Structured Data A Comparative Study of Stardinates and Parallel Coordinates, In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV 05), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 312-320, 2005.