Skip to main content

​
What it’s for

A battery — a grid, on a paper questionnaire — asks the respondent to rate a list of items one after another on the same scale:
“I’m going to read out some areas of life. For each one, please tell me whether you think artificial intelligence will have a positive, negative or no real impact. For each one, just say: positive, negative or no real impact. Let’s start with your own life?” … “And education?” … “And finally, healthcare?”
A battery is not a separate type. It’s a Single choice or Rating question with the Battery switch on: “The options are the SCALE; each item below is asked against it in turn.”

​
Settings

Turning Battery on changes the inspector: Answer mode, Voice prompt, Alternative phrasings, Required, the rest of the Voice panel and the Behaviour panel work as they do for any question — see Question settings. A battery never reads a rating back and never screens a respondent out, so Read every answer back and Screen out if the question cannot be run are hidden, and Keep position isn’t offered on scale points.

​
Items

“Each item is asked against the scale below, one at a time. The key is what the item’s result is reported under.” Click + Item to add one. Each item has: Write each longer form so it can replace the label in the same sentence — after “And …”, “How about …” or “For …”. Leave it empty and every re-ask says the label again. Readiness blocks a battery with fewer than two items — ”… is a battery with fewer than two items.” — and a battery on any type other than Single choice or Rating.

​
What the respondent hears

The preamble. The voice prompt and the scale, spoken once: “…please tell me whether you approve or disapprove. For each one, just say: approve, disapprove, or no opinion.” An answer given during the preamble isn’t recorded against any item. The items, one at a time, with lead-ins that change with position — “Let’s start with Chris Minns?”, “And Mark Speakman?”, “And finally, the Greens?” The first ask of an item doesn’t repeat the scale, to keep the pace up. Re-asks. When an item has to be asked again, the scale comes back with it — “For public transport, would you say approve, disapprove or no opinion?” — using a longer form if you’ve written one. On a scale of three points or fewer, a request to hear it again brings the scale straight back. Hearing the scale again. “What were the options?” gets “Sure — the scale is: …”. This doesn’t use an attempt, and a rating given straight afterwards counts for the current item. A possible mishearing — a rating matched only from an Often heard as line or because it sounds like a scale point — gets a single check: “Sorry, did you say favourable?” Otherwise ratings are never read back. Declining.
  • “Skip that one” declines just the current item, and the battery moves to the next.
  • “I’m done with this” stops the whole battery.
  • After Declines in a row declines one after another (3 by default), or Declines in all declines in total (4 by default), the rest of the battery is skipped. Rating an item resets the in-a-row count.
Attempts per item. Each item gets the question’s attempt caps (ask, clarify, don’t know and so on). When an item runs out of attempts, it’s left unanswered and the battery moves on to the next item — it doesn’t end the battery. FAQs, busy and stop work as they do on any question — see Answers given early and interruptions.

​
Routing

  • Exclude battery item (in the advanced rule builder) drops an item so it’s never asked — for example, an item that doesn’t apply to this respondent. A dropped item is recorded as NA. See Routing rules.
  • A battery can’t screen a respondent out.

​
What is recorded

After the call, each item is stored as its own answer, with the item key as its occurrence key — so in the CSV export each rated item appears as a separate row with the item key in the occurrence_key column and the scale point in the answer column. See Responses and export.

​
Tips

  • Keep item labels short and parallel — Your own life, Your job, Your family — and put the detail in longer forms.
  • Keep the scale short. Three to five points is easy to hold in mind across a run of items.
  • Put the scale in the preamble with a lead-in like “For each one, just say:”; don’t repeat it in every item.
  • Turn on Shuffle item order to spread order effects across respondents.

​
Next Steps