[DDI-SRG] Text Representation ID00028

[Wendy Thomas]

We need further discussion of the TextRepresentation issue. Please read 
below and comment in MANTIS ID 28.

0000028: Text Representation has "range" option but we can idenitfy no use 
for this
Description  Range seems to have been added to Text Representation during 
the reconciliation between the structures for question response domains 
and variable representation types. The only instance of a "range" for text 
we can think of is when codes are represented by alpha characters rather 
than numeric. If no use case can be provided for adding this it should be 
removed.
Proposed Solution  Remove Range option from

Related Module  Reusable
XPath  reusable/TextRepresentationType

I have investigated the origin of a "range" in text 
response/representation and believe this was added to the Candidate 
structure due to a misinterpretation of the earlier description of 
variable representations. In prepraring the Candidate Draft an effort was 
made to reconcile the descriptions of Response Domains for Questions and 
Representations for Variables and create a single set that could be used 
for both cases. In the Public Review version Question had both a Text 
(optional max length, no range) and a Numeric (optional range with upper 
and lower bounds). Variable had a single structure with a declariations of 
alpha, numeric, mixed plus an optional min max range AND a top code (top 
codes are used to indicate that the top code value represents both itself 
and any response higher than this amount). Note that the range was only 
used for numeric instances. In reconciling these Text Representation 
gained a range (presumably from the multi-use variable structure) and 
Numeric lost its top code as it reflected the structure from the question 
based numeric response domain where a top code is a coding instruction 
rather than a valid value to be collected. Therefore range should be 
removed from TextRepresentationType. I will add a bug about the numeric / 
data representations as these seem to be confused also.


RESPONSE:
Remove range option from TextResponse; see 0000004 should have ability to 
define specific format of text (string). Numeric content strings such as 
zip codes etc would fall under text as you want it to retain leading zeros 
and internal spaces. User defined format constraints

WE have some specified structures like date, but Text is used for many 
structures that are ment to have specified structures. Being able to 
describe these will help with data validation. Software generally simply 
deal with these as strings.

Wendy L. Thomas                          Phone: +1 612.624.4389
Data Access Core Director		 Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
Minnesota Population Center              Email: wlt at pop.umn.edu
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455