By using the ‘Continuous line’ type, app users are able to draw a continuous line on a chart, as shown in the following video. This items can be used to assess the change and variability of a certain construct in an interval. For example, when stress is measured using a normal repeated measurements protocol, it is impossible to know what happened between the beeps. Using this item it is possible to recover this information. The example questionnaire ‘continuous line example’, found in the library of m-Path, gives a small example of how this can be used.
This question type or item has multiple settings:
Question or statement: The full question. The text is shown smaller than for other questions and cannot be formatted.
Label: The label of the question, the name of the variable when data is exported.
Reference label: The reference label is the label from another question. If the reference label is given the blue dot on the left and right (see video above) can be added. These are set at previous and current measurement of the question related to this reference label. The previous measurement is fetched from the previous filled in questionnaire that use the reference label. This way app users can fill in the continuous line question with how they felt between two measurements. The use of this reference label is also shown in the example questionnaire ‘continuous line example’ in the library. If this questionnaire is filled in multiple times, the dots appear.
Min Y label: text shown on the bottom left of the y-axis. If nothing is filled in, the theoretical minimum of the question of the reference label is taken.
Max Y label: text shown on the top left of the y-axis. If nothing is filled in, the theoretical maximum of the question of the reference label is taken.
Min X label: text shown on the bottom left side on x-axis. If nothing is filled in, it shows the time of previous measurement of the reference label. The time of the previous questionnaire where this reference label was last assessed.
Max X label: text shown on the bottom right side of the x-axis. If nothing is filled in, it shows the text ‘now’.
Minimum value: the minimum y value of the continuous line.
Maximum value: the maximum y value of the continuous line.
No autocomplete: By default, the line does autocomplete. That means when a user starts a bit right from the y-axis (at the minimum x value), the line is automatically drawn to start at the y-axis. Similarly, when the app user stops drawing before the maximum x-value is reached, the line is automatically drawn to the maximum x-value.
Output
The output the researcher will be able to export from this question is a list of numbers. The first half give the x-values, the second half give the y-values. For example, if the list is 100 numbers, the first 50 give the x-values and number 51 to 100 give the corresponding y-values.