Teaching Tip: Validating Google Form Answers
July 16, 2014
Google Forms have so many great uses, both inside the classroom and as a productive
administration tool. The power of Google Forms comes in the collection of responses
into a Google Sheet that has basic evaluation capabilities similar to Microsoft Excel.
When you want the responses to be in a specific format, you might have to apply validation
rules. In Google Forms, you can set validation criteria for checkbox, text and paragraph
text form fields. Each type of question validation has different settings. You can
use regular expressions to help define what kind of data is acceptable. Validation
looks for a specific pattern of data that is entered by users and aids in your analysis
once the results are collected.
Checkbox question types
The validation setting for checkbox questions allow you to require a specific number
or range of numbers from options that users select. If you ask for a specific number
of questions to be answered or if you allow for a range of checkboxes, you can choose
“Select at least," “Select at most” or “Select exactly” from the dropdown menu. Don’t
forget to enter some error text so users get an idea of why their entry might be denied
if they don’t follow your directions.
For example, let’s say you want users to select three of four options. Choose the
“Select exactly” option and then put the number “3″ in the next field. Enter error
text like, “You must select 3 of the 4 options.”
Text question types
The validation settings for text questions allow you to use numbers, text or regular
expressions as validation tools. Within each of the validation settings there are
multiple options for defining acceptable responses in order to further define the
acceptable answers from your users.
For example, let’s say you want to ask users to enter their preferred phone number
using dashes between the three sets of numbers. Choose “regular expression” and “matches”
from the drop-down menus. Enter “^\d{2}-\d{3}-\d{4}$” into the pattern field.
If users don’t use a dash, then their input will be denied.
Options for paragraph question types are similar to text question types, with the
exception of the option to set number validation.
-- Teaching Tip by Heidi Olson, Learning Design coordinator at UAF eLearning
For more information about using validation in Google Forms, go to iTeachU.