Have question 'pools' been considered?

Basically you create questions and groups of questions, then when you create a survey you import them from a list already stored in the database.

Steve

You can export groups and questions as a .csv file and import them, but there is no pool inside LimeSurvey; you have to store the groups in your filesystem.

I think this is a good idea. Business survey software like Globalpark offers library of questions, where you can save stuff like standard questions, standard error other survey messages, scales, etc.

For fast work on surveys it would be an advantage over saving questions to csv and import them again (e.g. no preview, etc.).

Regards.

You are right, it would be more comfortable ==> Feature request for v2;
Some things are already there:
# Copy Questions
# Copy Conditions
# Reusable Labelsets

Holch is right, when you are doing large amounts of questions it is better to have a 'pool' rather than having to import information. Yes you could import, but why not to a 'pool' rather than a survey.

Steve

Yes - question libraries and pools are a big part of v2. Reusing questions from survey to survey is fine if you just want to capture the question type and data again.

But instancing the same question AND answer (the same data in the answers) from survey to survey is dangerous... that isn't in the works for v2.

-Juhan

Hi Juhan,
can you explain why you consider instancing questions AND answers dangerous?

In general I think that creating pools is a very nice feature which improves limesurvey's look and feel.

Creating a question library has been part of the plan since day 1.
Reusing the same exact questions in multiple surveys (and the answers are all tied together in the system - fill that one question out in one survey and it's automatically answered in another survey) is nutty.

Issues:
* updating the question is hairy
* context matters
etc etc.

Need me to go deeper?

-Juhan

Maybe we are talking about different answers. I mean pre-defined answers. Are you talking about the users' answers/choices?

When copying a question and answers you have to assign new IDs of course. Then you can use the question AND the pre-defined answers in several surveys.

I'm not sure how and if you are looking at doing question pools, but on my test machine I have created an odbc link to the database and have experimented in placing questions in a group that doesn't exist, for example with a group id of 0.

When going into the site, the question doesn't appear, meaning I can add loads of questions and leave them out if needed.

My coding skills are in VB and not php, so I'm not sure if it could be done this way, or is there another way.

It's a crude way to get it to work.

Steve