How the different answer components are presented in exports

In Citizen Space you are able to export and view response data in .xlsx, .docx and PDF format. All 3 of these files will display your answer components in different ways.

Please note that ‘Additional Information’ answer components like fact banks or text will not be exported to any of these formats as this information does not provide response data. 

.xlsx

In an .xlsx export, each row represents a respondent with their various answers arranged into each column.

Some answer components in Citizen Space may need multiple columns to display response data about the same question, if the question allows or requires the respondent to engage with more than one potential answer.

These answer components include:

• Checkboxes
• Dropdown list
• Matrix of choices
• Ranking

All other answers will only be displayed in one column each as these components only give respondents the option to pick a single answer. These include:

• Single line text
• Multiple line text
• Email address
• Postcode
• Number
• Radio buttons
• Single checkbox
• File upload

Answer components with a radio button, checkbox or file upload will have ‘Not Answered’ if a respondent does not answer them, all other answer components will be left blank for anything unanswered. This will not be true for required questions however, as they will always have an answer in their field. 

With file uploads, respondents who upload a file will have a URL as their response, if you are logged into Citizen Space, you can use this URL to search and download the respondent's uploaded file. 

If you make the single checkbox answer component a required question, all respondents will have ‘Yes’ for their response. If it is not a required question, respondents who do not tick the checkbox will have ‘No'.

PDF

With regards to your PDF summary report, each question from your consultation will have the response data displayed using both a bar graph and a table.

Like the .xlsx document, some questions will have more than one part to them, therefore they will have multiple bar graphs and tables to reflect this. This is again due to some questions allowing or requiring respondents to engage with more than one answer. The following answer components will have multiple parts to them: 

• Checkboxes
• Dropdown list
• Matrix of choices
• Ranking

With the PDF export, the bar graph showing the results for each question is a great visual representation of your response data while the table provides a summary with total numbers and percentages. Both the graph and the table also show the number of respondents who do not answer the question. 

Additionally, questions with text box, name or date answer components will only show you the number of respondents who answered the question, no additional data such as a bar graph or table will be displayed.

Note: If a question has a file upload answer component, this will not be displayed in the PDF export. 

.docx

The .docx summary report is very similar to the PDF export in terms of how data is displayed. This version is also editable unlike the PDF version.

With regards to the response data, it is still displayed in both a bar graph and a table, the only addition to the .docx file compared to the PDF is the .docx file gives you a short sentence at the beginning of each part of the question to let you know how many responses were received for that part of the question.

Much like the PDF file, text box, name and date answer components only show the number of respondents who answered the question.