Aphabetic order of items

Question

Hey all,

I have a multilingual project where I order my items alphabetically in two questions. This works nicely exept for two items that are for any reason always shown at the end - even behind the items that are excluded from alphabetical order. It would not bother me a lot if I did not had "Other" Codes with an open question. Since I have already implemented the different languages I cannot use the toolbar anymore to change or check the order.

So I have two questions here:
a) how can I fix the order of the items
b) Is there a possibility to still access the item-option toolbar in a multilingual project?

Thank and best regards

Comments

Sounds interesting ... would you mind sending me the XML of this question (can be exported at the top of the question management form) to info@soscisurvey.de for an analysis?

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Thank you, just send the XML!

Answer 1

Thank you for the XML file.

The test was actually a bit irritating ... but actually everything worked correctly. Did it not? Well, depends on how you look at it. This is what happend:

1) SoSci Survey did the alphabetical sorting for your base language (or with whatever you started testing)

2) Then SoSci Survey stored that order internally.

3) They you switches the language version within the interview.

4) And then the question was shown in a different language version, but SoSci Survey had still the original order stored, and used that one. Yet, the other language version had additional items - that were shown at the end.

Long story told short: The update will remove step 2 for the alphabetical order. Becvause that was really irritating in the test. This change will keep up the order when switching the language within the interview. However, that's a border case, because it is quite unlikely that someone sees a question in one language and then switches language to answer that language.

Comments

Thanks a lot for your answer! That sounds quite clear. However, the issue also occured during a pretest where I sent the tester the link including the ending for the German language (&l=ger). He did not switch language during the test.
I just checked and have the same problem but with another item (31 "Milka") now and also for 32 "Reese's" in another language. So basically for the brands that I had to add in a later stage

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Hmm ... I understand that you are working on www.soscisurvey.de (?), and although we already installed the update, you still have issues with the incorrect item order?

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Well yes and no. I do not have the issue with the same items as before but with two new ones. The respective items are the last one in the item list (I added them after translation). Could this be a reason for the issue? They are not anchored to the end.

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As far as I remember, you have 4 items pinned to fixed positions. If you want these items to appear at the end of the list, make sure, that there are no other items "below". Because if you tell SoSci Survey to use a fixed position for them means: That position and no other. If the fixed items to not appread at the end of the list in the navigation (list fo questions), than drag them down (or the new ones up) in the question.

If the current position in the "list of questions" is not causing te problem, well, maybe I need the XML of the question once more :)

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Ah thanks a lot. I think that might be the solution. Could you quickly tell me how I can change the position of an item in a multilingual questionnaire? because all I can change by now is the translation...

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Oh I found out. nevermind. I keep you posted!

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The easiest way is to select the base language for editing (using the flag on the upper right), and than use the drag/drop-sorting in the question.

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It works now. Thank you so much for your help!