GB2412832A

GB2412832A - Status and progress monitoring system for computer based interviews

Info

Publication number: GB2412832A
Application number: GB0511932A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Richard Warrington; David Skuse
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2001-10-24
Filing date: 2001-10-24
Publication date: 2005-10-05
Anticipated expiration: 2021-10-24
Also published as: GB2412832B; GB0125536D0; GB0511932D0; GB2382290A; GB2382290B

Abstract

A computer system for recording an interview is disclosed. A tree display corresponding to the structure of the interview for indicating progress with the interview includes the status of individual questions and of groups of questions. This list of controls displaying progress is separate from the input controls.

Description

COMPUTER BASED INTERVIEWING SYSTEM

The present invention relates to a computer system for interviewing.

Interviews are used to gather data from a subject. They are used in preference to written questionnaires when, for example, the questions would pose some difficulty to the subject of the interview, for example, he or she is unfamiliar with the purpose of the questioning, or the interviewer has to adapt the questions to the subject or has to interpret the answers. Even in an interview, a written questionnaire may be of assistance to the interviewer to provide structure to the interview and to serve as a checklist of questions to be asked.

Computers are, of course, used in many kinds of application to record data and frequently this is done by means of an on- screen form which an operator fills in. The interview system of the present invention uses on screen forms but in an improved manner.

While of course the use of interviews is widespread and the present invention may be of use in any interview, it is thought that the present invention may be of particular interest to doctors, lawyers and financial advisors.

The object of the present invention is to provide an improved tool for the recording of interviews on a computer.

Many of the improvements made are applicable generally to database systems and so it is a further object of the invention to improve those also.

Various aspects of the invention are defined in the appended claims.

There will now be described an embodiment of the present invention, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying FIGURES of which: FIGURE 1 shows the main processes performed in the preferred embodiment of the system.

FIGURE 2 shows a tool, the interview explorer, with only the sections or groups visible.

FIGURE 3 illustrates the symbols and colours used to denote in the interview explorer various states of the interview questions.

FIGURE 4 illustrates some further symbols and colours used to denote in the interview explorer.

FIGURE 5 shows a form for entering the attributes of the questions.

FIGURE 6 shows an interview screen where the answers to the questions are entered.

Figure 1 shows the main processes performed in the preferred embodiment of the invention. As shown in Figure 1 the questions for an interview are first compiled 1 and entered 2 into the system by the designer of the interview, in particular to a database 4. Microsoft Access_, for example, may be used to manage and access the database. The designer also enters 3 information relating to whether there are questions to which particular answers make other questions irrelevant. This information (termed herein "dependencies") is used later to prevent such irrelevant questions from being asked. The system allows the specification by the user of any number of named routes through the interview. A route is a selected set of questions drawn for example from many parts of a complete interview which address a particular theme and which it might be helpful to ask or review sequentially. At any stage of an interview, a different route may be selected as current. For example a lawyer's interview with a client could shift from the divorce to the child responsibility aspect of the case by switching routes.

Once the questions and the dependencies have been entered, the system will generate the on-screen forms that will be used to enter the answers to the questions. The definitions of these forms are stored either in the database or as shown in a separate store 7. The generation of the forms is described in detail later.

When an interview is opened, the system displays 8 forms defined in the form generation step 6 with the caret positioned in the first response field. The system provides various aids to navigation through the interview and indicates progress with the interview. Any one of the named routes can be made active at any time. Finally, once the interview is complete, or if desired part way through, a report 9 can be generated 10 incorporating, for example, preferably both the questions asked and the answers given.

The system and its operation are described in detail below. A visual navigation tool that may be used is, however, described first.

The interview explorer 11 is shown in Figures 2, 3 and 4.

This provides a view on the questions using a tree view control. (To allow best use of the interview explorer the user should, when compiling the questions, organise them in a hierarchical manner.) In the interview explorer, the root node 12 is labelled "Interview" and the leaf nodes 13 represent questions. The symbols used for the questions give information about their status, as described below. The intermediate levels 14 represent groups of questions, termed "subsections" below and in the Figures. Subsections may be expanded and collapsed, to reveal and hide icons below in the hierarchy, in the normal way for a tree view control. Double- clicking a question at one of the leaf nodes, or tapping <Enter> when a node is selected (highlighted), causes the corresponding area of the interview screen (again to be described below) to be displayed so that answers to that question may be entered whereas a right click causes a pop up menu to be displayed in relation to the node which amongst other things displays the user's response to the question (making a visit to the form unnecessary).

The interview compilation process is now described in detail.

Having decided 1 upon some questions for an interview the user enters 2 them into the database. Although the questions and their attributes may be entered, for example, directly into tables in the database, in the preferred embodiment the user makes use of the interview explorer as follows. Having selected a node in the interview explorer 11, the user selects a menu item, to add a section, subsection, or question. If a question is to be added, a form, shown in Figure 5, is displayed and the user enters the attributes of the question. First there is the text of the question 15 itself. (Preferably this text is displayed in both the interview explorer and the interview form (Figure 6) but different texts could be used each taken from separate boxes that would be provided on the form of Figure 5.) The structure of the interview may be modified by dragging section, subsection and question nodes.

The question type of the answer is entered in the form of Figure 5. This may be free text, numeric, a date, a time, age, OptionGroup, Combo, ListMulti, or RepeatingAnswer.

Repeating Answer questions allow for the fact that some questions apply to each of an arbitrary number (which may be zero) of 'entities' (for example, the children in a family) and may well comprise a series of subquestions (thus for each child: name, date of birth, gender, and so on).

OptionGroups and Combos both display a selection of options from which only one may be chosen: the OptionGroup displays each option above a 'radio button', whereas the Combo displays the options in a drop-down list. The ListMulti question presents a selection of options from which any number may be chosen.

Free text, numeric, age, date and time responses in any computerized interview system cannot of themselves unambiguously and conveniently express "Don't know". In the present system such question types have a "Don't know" attribute. When this is set during the definition of a question, the system creates, at the form generation stage, next to the usual control an extra control to allow the user to indicate a "don't know" answer. (Question types which offer a fixed set of responses can offer "Don't know" amongst those responses, and have no need of a special control).

Dependencies (also discussed further below) are entered in the form of a rule in a box 32 referring to one or more of the questions, for example, 'Q4.4.4 - "Yes"'.

The questions and their attributes are stored in a database, preferably with the questions and most of their attributes being stored in a main table. A question with a fixed response set for the user to choose from is linked to an option set ID, which in turn identifies a group of responses within a table of responses. This device enables the re-use of response sets (such as the Yes/No set) for different questions.

Although generally the user will want to enter question dependencies 3 and routes 5 these steps are not required before the forms are generated 6. The default route through the questions includes all those entered and the default for dependencies is that there is none. So the preferred system is arranged to allow the user to have the system generate the forms 6 and then to enter answers 8 without entering dependencies 3 or routes 5.

Figure 6 shows a typical screen display 24 during interviewing i.e. entering the answers. Each question is displayed as laid out by the system in the form generation step 6. In the preferred embodiment there is a question number 25 on the left, the text 26 of the question in the centre and the screen controls 27 for entering the text on the right. The number is generated from the hierarchy of the questions; question 4.1.6 is the sixth question from the first subsection of the fourth main section. The user asks the interviewee the questions and enters the responses using the screen controls. Figure 6 includes various sorts of control. Question 4.1.8 has a numeric answer type and has displayed a box for entering the value and also an associated button 28 (with the question mark "?") by it to allow the user to indicate a "don't know" answer. The box for the answer to question 4.1.9 is disabled because the user has selected the "don't know" button. Question 4.1.5 has a free text field but the question is disabled in response to the answer to question 4.1.4 being yes (see the example dependency given above) - the designer of the interview does not need additional details in the case of a hospital birth, and has set up a dependency reflecting this. In the preferred embodiment question 4.1.4 is defined by the user selecting the OptionGroup question type and the yes/no/don't know option set.

In question 4.1.6 the interview designer has chosen the ListMulti question type which allows more than one response to be chosen from a list box 44 display of all the possible answers. This illustrates some further points. One 29 of the possible answers to this question has been provided as "other, included in details below". If the user selects this item 29 a box 30 is enabled so that the user may input the appropriate value. If the item 29 is not selected then the text box 30 is disabled. This behaviour is achieved in the preferred embodiment by the user having included an answer "other, included in details below" when compiling the interview, having defined a question 4.1.7 with the question text "Tell me more about these birth difficulties" and a free text answer type to receive the value, and having set a dependency to enable question 4.1.7 if one of the answers to 4.1.6 is "other, included in details below". The setting of dependencies is discussed further below.

In an alternative embodiment the user may set an attribute (e.g., by checking a box (not shown) provided for that on the question designer form of Figure 5 associated with the ListMulti option) for the inclusion of an entry "other included in details below" and the system will then also provide automatically the text box 30 which behaves as in the preferred embodiment, i.e. the text box 30 being enabled when the user selects "other - included in the details below" when answering the question Q4.1.6.

In the preferred embodiment one 31 of the items in the screen control for question 4.1.6 is provided automatically as "none applies". In an alternative embodiment "none applies" is only displayed by the system if the user has set an attribute (e.g. again by checking a box (not shown) provided for that on the question designer form of Figure 5 associated with the ListMulti option) when defining the question. If the "none applies" item is clicked then all the other selected items in the list box are deselected by the system even though the list box has been set to allow the user to make more than one answer. Clicking any other item causes the "none applies" answer to be cleared (if it is already selected).

As shown in Figure 6, the screen control for a "repeating answer" question is a box 45 in which the user may type each one of an arbitrary number of sets of answers, each on a separate line.

The question definition form shown in Figure 5 also allows an age type question. If this is selected it provides on the question form a pair of input boxes (47 in Figure 6), one for the years part and one for months part of the age concerned.

If the "don't know" attribute is selected for this question type, the system provides only one "don't know" button 23 on the question form in association with the pair of input boxes for the age and, if that is selected, the system will disable both the input boxes 47 as shown for question 6.1.1.

The question definition form also allows the interview designer to insert maximum and minimum values 22 for appropriate question types. User entry made to the question is validated against those values and the user is prompted to try again if a value outside the range is entered. (Code for that is added to the question form when it is generated. This is explained in detail below for other functions.) For the age question type the validation is carried out on the year and months part together. For example the lower Limit might be set at 2 years 6 months and the month value is checked to see that it is 6 or more only if the year value is 2 or more.

Variations on the age type question are possible where a value has two or more parts which have a different number base, e.g. feet and inches (which is popular in the United Kingdom for a person's height).

The answers to the questions entered into the screen controls 27 on the right hand side of the screen are stored in the database. This is handled by having tables of answers for each data type of answer in the database. The records of each answer table have a field for storing a link that identifies the question, a field identifying the instance of the interview, which may be a link to an entry in a table giving details of the person being interviewed, and a field for the answer. There may be, for example, a table for numeric answers having a numeric answer field, a table for date/time answers having a date/time answer field and a table

for textual answers having a textual answer field.

In the preferred embodiment, answers where the user has to make a single selection from a list are coded into the numeric answer field as a value associated with that item at design time. Preferably, a "don't know" item will be given the value used elsewhere by the system to encode "don't know" (as in its recording of the status of a question for which a separate "don't know" button has been set by the interviewer). If multiple answers are selected, each is given the value 2k, where k is its position in the list, and the 2k values for the selected answers are OR'ed together before

being stored in the numeric answer field.

Each 'Repeating Answer' question is served by a dedicated table, in which one row corresponds to one set of responses from the arbitrary number of sets entered by the interviewer.

The generation of the screen controls 27 for the answers and the layout of those and of the question texts and question numbers is achieved using the programming language included with Microsoft_ Access'M. It is likely that an interview will comprise many more questions than can viewed on the screen at once. In general this is handled by defining a large form and allowing the user to scroll through it. The operating system or programming language may limit the size of a screen form. The system solves this problem by dividing the interview into a number of forms and generating 6 definitions for each. When the answers are being entered, if the user moves off the bottom or top of a form the next or previous form respectively is displayed.

In the interview entry screen 24 shown in Figure 6, a number of features may be activated by clicking the question number.

A double-click results in a Word' document being opened into which the user may insert comments i.e. additional information not catered for by the controls on the right hand side of the screen of Figure 6. Preferably, when a question is double-clicked the system inserts the text of the question as a heading amongst any existing notes so that comment order reflects question order, and positions the caret beneath the heading. If a comment has already been recorded on a question, then the caret is positioned at the end of the comment so that additional material may be entered.

Comments are copied into the reports generated (described below) after the appropriate question.

A right click displays a pop-up menu (for example as shown for question 4. 1.4 in Figure 6) allowing the user to mark the question for his or her own purpose, the marked status being reflected in the interview and route explorers (as described below), or to unmark it if it is already marked. Another menu item displays further information on the question such as how the user should handle special cases. A further menu item allows the user to reset the question to its state before it was answered. The question's status is set to unanswered', icons in the interview explorers are set to red for the question and its parent subsection and section, and any answer recorded for the question is cleared. This is particularly useful for questions where the user must select a single response from multiple possible answers as the industry standard controls for these do not provide a way of clearing a selection once made, conventionally it being only possible to make another selection thereafter. Preferably the screen control is also reset to its initial appearance, but it could be cleared in a manner indicating that "unanswering" had taken place.

Navigating through even a moderate number of questions on the forms of a conventional interview to find a particular question is not the easiest of tasks for a user; the interview explorer helps with that. As mentioned above, this provides a tree view of the groups of questions: a double click on a question, or tapping <Enter> when a question is highlighted, takes the user to the corresponding question in the interview screen 24 of Figure 6.

The interview explorer also provides various indications of the progress of the interview (see Figures 3 and 4). This information is conveyed by changing the icons that are used to represent the questions, subsections and sections. Green icons 33 denote completed questions and groups of questions.

A red question-mark icon 36 denotes an unanswered question.

The red is echoed in the parent group icons at all levels.

Thus the progress of the interview is apparent from the interview explorer without having to expand the section icons to view the individual question icons. A black icon 35 denotes a question for which multiple answers may be given (i.e. a "repeating answer" question). A white icon 38 denotes a question which has become non-applicable as a result of the answers to an other question(s). Although not all the icons below the section icon 37 are green that section icon is still displayed in green because a question for which multiple answers may be given (e.g. black icon 35) is never given the unanswered status, since a list of no items may well be a valid answer to such a question, and because if a question has become inapplicable (e.g. white icon 38) following the answer to another question it is not given the "unanswered" status but rather the "not applicable" status.

For the ListMulti question type, the question associated with the text box 30 provided for the user to input his own answer is marked as not applicable if "other" is not selected in the associated list box 44 and is marked as answered or unanswered if it is, depending on whether the user has made that input. A "folded corner" 34 denotes a marked question.

The device is echoed in the parent subsection and section icons. The folded corner may be set and reset by the user for his or her own purpose. On the interview forms the number of a marked question is given a yellow frame (see Q 4.1.8 in 6).

As an aid to displaying the correct icons and colours, and in order to facilitate reporting, the system maintains a question status table in the database. Each record has a field identifying the instance of the interview, a field identifying the question and a field for its status. The status value may be "unanswered", "answered", "don't know" or "not applicable", the latter being assigned when the question has become irrelevant as the result of the answers to other questions.

The interview explorer also has a Find function which allows the user to enter a search text. Questions matching that text are successively highlighted in the interview explorer via "Find first" and "Find next" buttons.

As has been noted above questions are disabled in the display 24 if they become irrelevant and the icon in the interview explorer is changed to reflect that. The criteria, or "dependency", for a question becoming irrelevant are decided upon by the user and are entered into the system with the questions (as was mentioned above). Preferably Boolean expressions are allowed, possibly including references to the answers to more than one question. Optionally the system may be configured to allow an expression defining whether a group of questions is irrelevant to be entered by the user.

Irrelevant questions are disabled in response to testing the relevant Boolean expressions. Preferably that is done each time the user moves the focus away from one of the screen controls.

Another feature of the answer entry screen of Figure 6 is that the question legends may be automatically tailored by taking into account the answers to other questions or by taking details of the subject from the "case manager" dialog not illustrated) which records some personal details about the interviewee and allows the user to start a new instance of the interview for that interviewee. For example, question 4.1.8 (Figure 6) has had the name "Rudolf" inserted automatically by the system when the user -typed "Rudolf" in the answer text box for an earlier question asking for the child's name. This helps the user ask questions in a personalized manner without having to pause to find the answers to other questions. The user specifies whether and how this happens by inserting tokens, which are interpreted by the system, into the question text in box 15. For example the text entered in box 15 for question 4.1.8 (Figure 6) was - "What was <Child Name>' s birth weight (in Kg)", where <Child Name> is a token replaced by the system with the appropriate value entered in the case manager dialog. A token of the form <Q3.1.2> is replaced by the system with the answer to a question of the interview itself.

Routes through the questions have been referred to above.

These are defined with the route explorer which has a similar tree view control to that of the interview explorer. To create a new route the user is first prompted for a name for it. The user then having made an appropriate menu or toolbar selection to edit the route, the system displays the interview explorer with the questions on the route (initially none) highlighted. The user may then select or deselect questions to include or exclude them respectively from the route. Both individual questions and groups of questions may be added to the route and are displayed accordingly in the route explorer.

Once a route is defined the user may activate the route. The route explorer displays, for the questions included in the route, the same icons and colours them in the same way as the interview explorer. It also allows the user to jump to the particular questions in the interview forms 24 in the same way. A navigation toolbar (not illustrated) has buttons with arrows which allow the user to move one question forward or back through the questions on the route, and there are equivalent keyboard short-cuts.

As was noted above, the present invention may be implemented in a database management system such as Microsoft Access-.

Such systems usually allow the database designer to lay out controls on forms for the entry of data. They usually also provide a macro or programming language, for example Access_ has a macro language and Visual Basic-. In the preferred embodiment the invention uses the programming language to lay out the controls on the forms based on the definitions of the questions provided by the user; the definitions of the forms may then be stored as part of the database, although preferably they are stored in a separate file 7 for ease of distribution to interviewers. If the definitions of the questions are changed by the user it is necessary to regenerate the forms.

The system provides many novel features compared to standard database systems. The code to support these is, in the preferred embodiment, provided in the programming language of the database for example Visual Basic_ in the case of Access^. Code is attached to and called from the screen form generated by the system to give the form the functionality described above. In the case of the screen controls which have modified functions compared to the basic controls provided by the database system the code for each control is copied from a template for that type of control and is modified with the appropriate references. For example, when the code is to be attached to an event procedure, such as is executed when the control is clicked by the user, the name of the procedure is modified to refer to the particular instance of the control - an example of this in Visual Basic_ would be: Private Sub AnswerControlQ4_1_3_Click() Where the new functionality involves two (or more) of the basic controls the system provides references to the others in the code supplied for each. For example, the don't know button click procedure is arranged to ask the user if he or she really wants to set the don't know button if the associated control for the answer already has an answer in it - if the user responds in the affirmative the associated control is cleared of that answer. The code of the don't know button click procedure is completed by the system during form generation to include references to the associated answer control(s) to do that.

Functions (not all mentioned above) for which code is provided in or called from the form are the "none", "other" and "don't know" aspects of the controls, the unanswer function, entry validation, dependency evaluation and the associated disabling and re-enabling of questions, the recording of supplementary notes in Word, the ability to move between successive forms where more than one is generated (due to size), the context menu for when a question is right- clicked, a toolbar with a button for optimizing the view of the form containing the current question, the generation of a warning to the user and the marking of a question as unanswered when the user deletes all of an existing answer.

Further, given the structure of the database tables for recording the user's answers to the questions, the input form controls are, in the preferred embodiment, not bound to those tables - the answers are recorded in those table by code associated with the form which operates as the input is made.

Features making use of other applications, in particular those making use of Words, are achieved through programmatic control of those applications, a facility which Microsoft terms Automation.

While the system has been developed with an interviewing system in mind, many of the features can be used elsewhere.

The "don't know", "other" and "none" features of the controls are applicable to input controls generally, for example.

The system could also be used for generating forms for inputting recordsto a data table, where the questions asked are to elicit from the user the values for respective fields of the records. (The questions could simply be the field names.) Once the answers to the questions have been entered, the system will provide the user with reports. Documentary reports 9 can be generated 10 and printed. The reports may take many forms. For example, the system may be arranged to score the answers provided by the user to individual or groups of questions and to provide those scores as a report, or the report may include the questions and answers interspersed. A report does not have to be printed directly as the system is arranged to generate 10 a word processing file 40 in, for example, Microsoft Wordy format, which can be then edited, if desired, with a corresponding word processing program 41, which can then be used to print a report.

The system also provides an export function 43 to the file format 42 of a widely used statistical analysis program known as SPSS.

Claims

CLAIMS: 1. A computer program product arranged to perform in a computer

the following steps: displaying on a form a plurality of input controls, accepting user input to the controls, monitoring progress with the making of input to the controls, displaying a separate list of the controls and indicating in the display of that list the progress with the making of the input to the controls.
2. A computer program product as claimed in claim 1 wherein the said list is organised hierarchically and is displayed to indicate that hierarchy.
3. A computer program product as claimed in claim 2, wherein the list includes items for groups of controls and those group items indicate the progress with the making of input to controls for a group.
4. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein said indicating of progress includes indicating whether or not input has been made to a control.
5. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein said indicating of progress includes indicating that input to a control is not required given the input made to one or more other ones of the controls.
6. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein said indicating of progress includes indicating that the user has marked a control as being of some special interest.
7. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein the controls are for inputting the answers to respective questions.
8. A computer program product as claimed in claim 7, wherein the said questions are displayed in association with the controls.
9. A computer program product as claimed in claim 7 or claim 8, arranged to perform the step of storing user input that defines the questions to be answered.
10. A computer program product as claimed in any preceding claim, arranged to perform the step of displaying a list of the controls separate from the display of the controls on the form.
11. A computer program product as claimed in claim 10, arranged to perform the step of accepting user input that defines questions to be answered, wherein the user input defining the question includes a text and that text is displayed in the said list of controls.
12. A computer program product as claimed in claim 10 or claim 11 arranged to store a selection, made by the user, of the questions and the said list displayed is of the questions of the selection.
13. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 10 to 12, wherein the said list is organized hierarchically and is displayed to indicate that hierarchy.
14. A computer program product as claimed in claim 13, wherein said list includes items for groups of controls and those group items indicate the extent to which input has been made to controls for a group.
15. A computer program as claimed in any one of claims 10 to 14, wherein the controls are for inputting the answers to questions.
16. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 10 to 15 wherein progress with answering the questions is indicated in the list.
17. A computer program product as claimed in claim 16, wherein said indicating progress includes indicating whether a question has been answered.
18 A computer program product as claimed in claim 16 or 17, wherein said indicating progress includes indicating that a question is irrelevant given the answer to one or more other ones of the questions.
19. A computer program product as claimed in any one of claims 16 to 18, wherein said indicating progress includes indicating that the user has marked a question as being of some special interest.
20. A computer program product as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the form is split into several forms which may be displayed separately.
21. A computer program product as claimed in any preceding claim implementing a database management system.
22. A computer program product as claimed in any preceding claim implementing an interview system.
23. A computer arranged to execute the computer program product of any preceding claim.