Description

This survey framework allows you to quickly generate interactive surveys to validate social network analysis approaches. The survey is designed to be deployed as a web application and all survey results are automatically stored into a MySQL database. Since the framework is written in R, it requires very little effort to take existing R infrastructure and integrate into a survey. An example survey can be found here: http://rfhinf067.hs-regensburg.de/survey/?p.id=1&c.id=1.

Required Programs

• Install GNU R, MySQL, and Apache HTTP server

  Add deb http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu precise/ to /etc/apt/sources.list, and execute

## First update system
sudo apt-get update

## R
sudo apt-get install r-base r-base-dev

## MySQL
sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql

## Apache webserver
sudo apt-get install apache2        

R package dependencies

• Install the required R packages in an R shell with

install.packages(c("igraph", "shiny", "yaml", "lubridate",
                   "devtools", "logging", "plyr", "stringr",
                   "RMySQL"), dependencies=T)

• Install the shinysky packages using devtools by opening an R console and entering:

library(devtools)
devtools::install_github("AnalytixWare/ShinySky")

Loading a test database

• A filled database is required to run the application, a test database has been included in the repository

• In the conf directory, two configuration files contain the parameters used to connect to the databases

  • user_database.conf contains the parameters for connecting to the database storing the user data
  • survey_db.conf contains the parameters for connecting to the database storing the survey responses

• To load the test database, first create a database user with the username and password set as codeface, create a database called user_data, then navigate to the User_db directory and enter the following

## Create a database called user_data
mysql> CREATE DATABASE user_data;
mysql> exit;

## Load the test database
mysql -ucodeface -pcodeface user_data < user_data.sql

Running the Web application

• Run the application by entering the following commands into an R terminal while in the project root directory

library(shiny)
runApp(".")

Important files

• server.R

  • The server script for querying the database and presenting the dynamic content to the user interface

• www/index.html

  • The entire user interface for the survey, all survey questions, presentation of R graphics, and the response fields

• www/login.html

  • The login page where survey participants can enter their personal information

• www/process_survey.php

  • The processing script to store responses from the survey into the response database

• conf/user_database.conf

  • The parameters for connecting to the database storing the user data

• conf/survey_db.conf

  • The parameters for connecting to the database storing the survey responses

• datamodel/survey.mwb

  • The MySQL database model for storing the survey responses