Setting up Themes

Themes provide a flexible way to group questions or answers across your assessment, allowing for additional layers of scoring, rating, and reporting beyond the standard response/section/subsection structure. Themes were previously called Segmentations.

Key features of Themes

• Flexible grouping. You can tag questions or answers with one or more Themes, creating thematic groupings that can span different sections of your assessment. This is particularly useful for analyzing themes that are addressed across various parts of the assessment.
• A Theme can belong to more than one Theme Group. Themes use a many-to-many relationship, so a single Theme can be linked to multiple Theme Groups. You select the groups a Theme belongs to directly in the Theme add and edit screen - there is no longer any need to duplicate a Theme in order to report it under different groupings.
• Automated scoring and reporting. Once Themes are set up, the system automatically calculates scores for each Theme. These scores can be incorporated into both feedback and cohort reports.

Linking Themes to questions or answers

Themes can be linked to either:

• Questions or calculations, regardless of where they appear in the assessment. This is the most common set up.
• Answers. Answer Themes allow each answer to a question to be linked to a different Theme.

Each question, calculation, or answer can be linked to as many Themes as you want.

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Where Themes live

Themes are managed at the assessment level, inside the Assessment Builder. There is no site setting to enable - Themes are available on every assessment by default, so there is no enabling step to complete before you begin.

1. Open your assessment in the Assessment Builder.
2. Click the Themes button in the toolbar.

The Themes page is organized into two subtabs:

• Theme Groups - view and manage your groups.
• All Themes - add or edit individual Themes, set their groups and color, and link questions, answers, and rating text.

Every Theme belongs to the assessment by definition, whether or not it is yet linked to a question or answer.

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Set up instructions

Step 1: Create a Theme Group

1. On the Theme Groups subtab, click Add Theme Group.
2. Give the group a name (e.g. "Competencies"). This name is internal to the system.
3. Number the group for ordering. This number is used to refer to the Theme Group using the SegG parameter in Feedback and Cohort reports. Do not duplicate numbers.
4. Click Save.

To edit or remove a group later, use the Edit Group and Delete Group links on the Theme Groups subtab.

Step 2: Create a Theme

1. On the All Themes subtab, click Add Theme.
2. Enter the Theme name (e.g. "Communication Skills"). A number (No.) is assigned automatically for ordering; you can change it if needed (do not duplicate numbers). This number is used to refer to the Theme using the SegmentationNo parameter in Feedback and Cohort reports.
3. Select the Group(s) this Theme belongs to. A Theme can belong to more than one group - select as many as apply.
4. Optionally choose a Color to override the normal rating-based color scheme on charts.
5. Use the Questions, Answers, and Ratings tabs to link questions or answers and maintain rating text (see Managing Assessment Themes for the Ratings tab in detail).
6. Click Save. Repeat for each Theme you need.

Step 3: Link your Themes to questions or answers

There are two ways to do this.

• In the Add/Edit Theme screen, use the Questions or Answers tab to select and add the questions or answers this Theme applies to.
• Or, by editing each question and selecting the Theme from the list in the Options tab.

A Theme is linked to either questions or answers, not both at once, but you can mix the approach across different Themes.

Copying a Theme Group

On the Theme Groups subtab, Copy Group opens a Copy To dialog with an assessment dropdown:

• This Assessment creates a copy of the Theme Group in the same assessment, with " (copy)" appended to the name and its Theme links carried across.
• Another assessment copies the Theme Group, its Themes, and all of their links into the assessment you select, ready to reuse.

This makes it straightforward to reuse a tried-and-tested Theme structure across multiple assessments.

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Themes screen reference

All Themes subtab

The All Themes subtab lists every Theme in the assessment, with its number, its Theme Group(s), and the number of questions or answers it is linked to. From here you can add a new Theme, edit an existing one, or open it to manage rating text and links.

Theme add/edit

1. Give the Theme a name.
2. Number the Theme for ordering (assigned automatically; do not duplicate). Used by the SegmentationNo parameter in Feedback and Cohort reports.
3. Choose one or more Groups if you wish to filter by group in your reports.
4. Choose a color if you wish to override the normal rating-based color scheme on charts.
5. Use the Questions / Answers / Ratings tabs to link items and maintain rating text.

Theme Group add/edit

1. Give the Theme Group a name. This name is internal to the system.
2. Number the Theme Group for ordering. Used by the SegG parameter in Feedback and Cohort reports. Do not duplicate numbers.

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FAQs