With Q-Builder, you are in control of the design of your questionnaire. You have total flexibility to include many types of questions - the questionnaire can be as long as you need.
Three of Tinuviel Software's products were used as the basis for the QBuilder development. The DIETQ semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire program provided the concept for the layout of questionnaires and the structure for the Computer-Based Interview. The WISP intake analysis program provided the food manipulation and the analysis engine. The Q-CON system provided the validation logic for data entry checking. These products have been developed over the last 15 years and are widely used throughout the UK and Ireland by dietitians, nutritionists and medical researchers.
The key innovation in the QBuilder design is the production of a compiler. This program takes the user-defined questionnaire and generates :
- a full data entry/edit system for the questionnaire
- a computerised interview based on the questionnaire
- a complete paper questionnaire form set (.RTF file) with coding boxes which can be post-edited in Word
- an HTML/ASP set of web pages to run an internet/intranet-based interview
- a dataset allowing the QBuilder Remote Data Entry (RDE) system to run the data entry/edit and interview at multiple locations
- a full nutritional analysis process for the questionnaire, with the ability to analyse mean daily intakes of up to 50 nutrients and compare intakes with appropriate Dietary Reference Values
The design brief for QBuilder was to create a program which could assist the user to create the full set of tools needed to collect and analyse a user-defined questionnaire without the need for complex programming. The program was to be useable by persons with nutritional/survey knowledge, but not necessarily IT staff. QBuilder has achieved these goals and provides the only package currently on the market which provides both a questionnaire design tool AND a nutritional analysis facility.
Subsequent developments made as a result of collaboration with university psychology departments extended the capability of QBuilder beyond the collection of dietary data. The program now includes many question types of a non-dietary nature, such as opinion/attitudinal measures, multimedia presentation, implicit association tests and millisecond-accurate response timing.
Further enhancements are constantly being planned and introduced to the product.