Chapter Nine
Creating Base HIPSYS Classes
Creating a base HIPSYS survey Class with customised names for an individual or an organisation means that you don't have to keep replacing the words contained within "% %" marks. (See following paragraphs.) The names you want to substitute will be preserved in the base HIPSYS survey Class.
So, a base survey Class is a particular application of a HIPSYS Class in which the client’s name can appear. A base Class is created whenever you select either File and Create Survey File or whenever you select File and Print Questionnaire from within HIP Edit.
Note: When you want to print a customised questionnaire by name or gender or for any other substitute word, select the "Print Questionnaire" option.
A base survey file is a file that HIP Input and HIPSYS can use later.
Notice how some of the question wordings in the previous examples used the text fragment "%COMP%". This fragment has special meaning to HIPSYS. In fact, all words surrounded by "%" signs have special meaning. These words are substituted with user-selected values when printed, such as the name of the particular organisation or person.
When you create a base survey Class, the user assigns all the words to be substituted. The substitutions are recorded in the survey file for later use. These words personalise the survey.
One special word to remember when designing classes of survey is the "%SEX(male,female,generic)%" expression. This special expression allows you to personalise questions with gender statements. The "generic" portion of this special word is optional and if omitted will generate "male/female" when the generic option is requested. An example of the use of the gender selection follows: -
"%SEX(He,She)% is proud of %SEX(his,her)% achievements."
If the gender selected for the questionnaire were male, then the above, after expansion, would read: -
"He is proud of his achievements";
Whereas if the gender selected were female, it would read: -
"She is proud of her achievements".
Alternatively, the generic option may be selected, in which case the question would read: -
"He/She is proud of his/her achievements".
When you have selected either Create Survey or Print Survey from the File menu, you will be prompted to specify the values for all substitute words contained in the survey class and to specify the gender of the target if required.