This is how Data Loader works
Data Loader automatically retrieves all responses from a web form and creates a new, updated file with the responses. This file is a CSV file. These are stored in the project area, sorted by online form, with complete data sets exactly as they were filled in the forms.
Dataloader delivers the data as it is, without modifications. Further processing and analysis must be done with suitable software.
You don't have to do anything to get this, Data Loader runs automatically for all projects that collect data from online forms to TSD.
Automatic update
Incoming data is processed continuously, in most cases it will be available a few seconds after it was submitted to the online form. In case of high load, it may take a little longer.
About the .csv files
You can find the .csv files in data\durable\nettskjema-data. Here you will find folders for each individual online form, which contains a CSV file with all the responses from the online form. If the online form accepts attachments, there will also be an 'attachments' folder.
You should not change any of the files in these folders, as they will be overwritten if new responses are received. If you are going to make changes to the data, you should first copy the file to another folder.
About the files
- The files in the nettskjema-data folder are updated as long as new responses are received from Nettskjema. They are overwritten (updated with new answers) every hour, and should not be edited or moved.
- Since the files contain research data, they must be in the same place throughout the project. Do not edit, delete or move the files.
- The files can be safely copied to another directory for processing and analysis.
- The file format is semicolon-separated values encoded with UTF-8. When importing into analysis programs, select semicolon as delimiter and UTF-8 as encoding.
Codebook and variable names
- The forms that belong to the project must be coded with Nettskjema's codebook. You then get an optimal workflow and correct import into programs such as SPSS, STATA, Excel and R.
- You should create your own variable names and avoid the automatic completion available in Nettskjema.
- There can be a maximum of 999 variables in one form. The maximum number of questions in an online form is therefore 999.
- The variable names can be a maximum of 60 characters.
- The first character must be a letter, then you can use numbers and letters interchangeably. The names must be unique within the same form.
- The variable names cannot be any of the reserved words in SPSS: ALL, AND, BY, EQ, GE, GT, LE, LT, NE, NOT, OR, TO, or WITH.
Read SPSS documentation in English (external link). - Variable names in the codebook cannot use these characters:
‘æ’, ’ø’, ’å’, ’;’, ’?’, ‘(’, ‘)’, ‘!’, ‘@’, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘%’, ‘^’, ‘*’, ‘+’, ‘=’, ‘[‘, ’], ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘~’, ‘`’, ‘|’, ‘-’, ‘.’, ‘:’
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