How to Properly Methodologically Set the Answers ‘Don’t Know’, ‘Invalid’, ‘None of the Above’ and ‘Refused’?

In the 'EDIT' - 'Questionnaire' tab, when adding answers, in the bottom right under the last answer or category, or in the case of 'Table' type questions, by clicking on the three dots in the top left above the table, you have the option 'Missing values' to give respondents the option to select one of the default missing values:

  • Don't know (-99): the respondent does not know the answer to the question;
  • Refused (-98): the respondent refused to answer the question;
  • Invalid (-97): the respondent answered with an invalid answer;
  • Other (-96): none of the answers given is relevant for the respondent

You can rename the default missing values by clicking on the category.

At the same time, you also have additional options for displaying these responses for respondents. You can specify that these answers are only displayed to the respondent if they do not answer the question. In this case, the question must be set as mandatory (select one of the options in the question settings when clicking on the 'Question is mandatory' option). When you turn on the option, you will enable the 'Show on alert' option, to the right of the missing value. If you tick the 'Show on alert' option, the respondent will only be shown this answer if they do not answer the question, which they will indicate by clicking on 'Next page'.

Example survey >>

Missing or non-content response values (described above) have negative values in the database and are excluded from the analyses by default (although you can add them), and you can see their values in the 'ANALYSE' - 'Statistics' tab in the Descriptive Statistics, Frequencies and Tables display options. In addition to missing values, some other missing responses are also ignored in some analyses (e.g. when calculating the average).

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