Date field

Discussions about creating CAPI applications to run on Android devices
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AriSilva
Posts: 591
Joined: July 22nd, 2016, 3:55 pm

Date field

Post by AriSilva »

Hi folks,
That´s my first time I´m working with this kind of field, and I have some doubts and comments.
1. The field can have 8, 6 or 4 digits, good enough. I was assuming that the 4 digit field would be to accept the year, as in YYYY, but there is no such a format. Why not?
2. If there is no provision to capture only the year I would assume that a 2 digit variable might do the trick, using a format like YY, or if one needs the month or the day, it might accept also the MM or DD formats.
3. When showing the field to enter the value, it is not straightforward the option to enter the number directly, one need to touch the field for the numeric keypad to be shown.
4. My great concern is when dealing with information not known, like the interviewer does not know the day (or the month). I did not see a way to enter 99 (for the day or month), or 9999 for the year, or even leaving them blank (notappl). I tried to clean the pad using the x key, or key 0 or 00 for the day, but the system does not allow it. Same thing for the month, it only accepts the 12 possibilities. Is there a way to enter something invalid to flag a not known answer?
Best
Ari
Best
Ari
Gregory Martin
Posts: 1777
Joined: December 5th, 2011, 11:27 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Re: Date field

Post by Gregory Martin »

The date field is limited in scope because we are using the default Android date control.

1) The thinking is that if you only want a year, you can just make it a text field (numeric length 4). You don't need a control for this.

3) This is simply the Android behavior. In fact, this is different on different devices. Each manufacturer gets to determine how this looks.

4) The unknown date is a problem, as that is not an option in the Android date control.

Personally, I would only use the date field for things like interview date, which you can prefill and which will likely only have to be modified by a day or two. For things like date of birth, I find the date field cumbersome, as it would be easier to simply fill in the fields, rather than scroll the date control values.

Of course, that leads to a limitation. If you add year/month/day as separate fields, then they'll show up as three separate screens on Android, which is awkward. That's why the multiple fields on a screen feature in CSPro 7.2 will be so useful. It will make collecting data like this much more convenient.
AriSilva
Posts: 591
Joined: July 22nd, 2016, 3:55 pm

Re: Date field

Post by AriSilva »

Thanks for the answer.
I do agree that this date field does not help much for dates far away from the present date, besides the fact that it does not handle the unknowns.
I´ll follow your advice using normal numeric text fields (one by one, day, month and year), which is not the best of the worlds, waiting eagerly for the 7.2 version.
I might try a filter question beforehand, asking "do you really know your birth date?", and capture the date in two different ways, using the date field for a known date, or a text field otherwise.
I´d like to know how this date issue is being handling in other csentry applications.
Best
Ari
Best
Ari
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