Assign Values to Text Responses and Calculate a Total Score

Sometimes you need to ask survey questions where the participant selects a verbal response (like “Very satisfied”), but you need to convert that response into a numeric value (like 4) to calculate a total score.

This gets tricky when you’re using custom variables because you can’t directly assign values to custom variables.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Collect text-based survey responses

• Translate each response into a numeric score

• Calculate a total score across multiple questions

• Use custom variables to track and store responses along the way

By the end, you’ll be able to score patient satisfaction surveys (or similar tools) even when using custom, non-numeric variables.

Steps to Implement:

1) Create 2 custom variables for the question. One single select variable to capture the responses in words and one to capture the responses as a number. 

2) In your survey, create a radio group question and tie it to the single select custom variable. This will be the question the participant selects on the survey.

3) Create a single-line input question, change the input type to a number format, then link it to the number version of the custom variable. Make this question invisible.

4) Create a survey logic statement for each response option in the text version of the question to set the numeric value in the hidden question.

5) Create a number type custom variable for the total score. 

6) Add an Expression type question to your survey and link it to the total score variable. 

7) Enter a calculation to add each of the score values. Make sure you enclosure each question name in curly braces { }.