| 摘要 |
An apparatus and method for providing selective views of on-line surveys are provided. With the apparatus and method, each survey has a survey data structure and a template data structure. In a preferred embodiment, the data structures represent tree structures having nodes, child nodes, links between nodes and child nodes, and the like, for the survey and the template. Changes to the survey are made in the template data structure. The survey data structure and the template data structure are compared to one another, and nodes are either added, subtracted, or modified based on the differences between the survey data structure and the template data structure. In this way, the survey data structure retains the information that is already in present in it, such as the questions and answers previously provided. Thereafter, when the survey is again presented to a user, the user's previous answers to questions still remaining in the survey are displayed but no answers are displayed for newly added questions. In addition, if the questions are modified, the modified questions are presented with no answers displayed until provided by the user. In this way, answer data for questions that were previously answered and are still remaining in the survey after modification are not lost. In addition, the survey data itself is not corrupted by the modification of the survey.
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