Seventy-Eight Memo Fields? 5

[JerSand]

I've been asked whether a team of interviewers could use ACCESS to collect interview data. The interviews would be structured, but responses would not be limited to "yes/"no" items or even to responses small enough to fit into text fields. There will will five interviewers conducting 13 interviews each, and there will be 78 points of interviewee response which the interviewers would like to store in an ACCESS table composed almost entirely of memo fields.

I have indicated that I think this is not a job for ACCESS if for no other reason than ACCESS's size limits. However, I'm far from a recognized authority in my workplace. Of course, I could be wrong, and if so, I'd be grateful for correction. If I'm right, I could use some supporting observations -- perhaps buttressed with some technical detail on ACCESS's limits -- from folks in the ACCESS community who know more than I do.

I'd be grateful for opinions.

Thanks.

JerSand

 

[psemianonymous]

I think Access will be fine as long as there are not 100000 applicants. If you're worried about 78 memo fields in one record, instead store one question per record, i.e.

ID           Interviewee_ID   Question_ID   Answer
(Autonumber) Integer          Integer       Memo


So then if one memo field corrupts, it only loses information in that one question.


Short Answer: very doable.

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[nerd1003]

In my oppinion if the interviewer was just wanting to use
access for the table then they may want to use excel.
But another way to do it would be to make a interview form
composed of check boxes with two for each question one for
the yes response and one for the no response,and text fields
where needed,as well as a field for the person conducting the interview to enter their name. Using a form would be much easier than entering the info into a table.

 

[CMooreJr]

JerSand
I agree with foolio. I have created several "survey" databases with combinations of checkboxes, memo fields, etc, some with over 100 questions each. I have had no problems even on the survey db's that end up with 8,000 records. It should work just fine for ya.

CmooreJr


"Thre are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works."

 

[GDGarth]

I agree - don't have 78 different memo fields - have one memo field, and another field that links it to a particular question / applicant.

If you do it that way, I don't see this as a problem.

 

[JerSand]

Thanks, foolio12, nerd1003, CMOOREJr, and GDGARTH. I'm grateful for your helpful observations and will try to assist the interview team in building an application. I should have noted that they'll want to enter the data using forms, and they'll want to produce many reports that -- I'm sure -- will be tens of pages long each. If any of you sees those as complicating or limiting factors, I'd be grateful if you let me know.

Thanks, again.

JerSand

 

[evalesthy]

I think nerd1003 was alluding to a valid point. If all or almost all or your response fields are memo fields are your reports really just going to be dumps of responses? That is, you won't have many meaningful sorting or filtering criteria. Checkboxes (yes/no) or option groups (1-10, 11-20, 21-30 etc.) and then a memo response field to allow explanation of the checkbox/option group might help you extract like responses. (e.g. all Yes reponses to Question 2 where participant age range was 25-35 etc.,etc.) How does the end user want to view this data and what would help them extract data in a meaningful way.

 

[Lightning]

Foolio12's idea is the way to go. And you can expand upon this for reporting and ranking the interviewees.

Simply add a number field to each record for the interviewer to add a ranking , and a text field for them to write their comments in.


HTH
Lightning

 

[MichaelRed]

While you cannot QUERY a memo field, that does not prevent one from extracting "meaningful" information from it. It is certainly not a trivial or complete soloution, it is certainly pratical to retrieve the memo field content and parse it for words words and phrases of interest. these coan often provide useful (and queryable) information.



MichaelRed
m.red@att.net

Searching for employment in all the wrong places

 

[evalesthy]

I did not mean to imply that you cannot search the Memo fields for words or phrases of interest. I was just concerned since Jersand said the database will be "composed almost entirely of memo fields" that the end users (report readers) desire to sort, group, filter etc., the data might be frustrated and was advocating the inclusion of meaningful fields that might avoid this problem.