Thanks for your in put and apologies for my lousy explanation! You are right
Fred in that I don't feel particularly clear on the fundamentals of what I'm
doing really at all. And thanks Jeff for suggesting Duane's database, I've
downloaded a copy and tried to look closely at what he's done. My main
problem is that I've come to this project halfway through and my Access
training has been limited.

During training, we set up the tables for the first questionnaire (and
unfortunately, this doesn't resemble Duane's database much) but I'm now
trying to do the second one by myself and I just felt a wee bit confused
about what exactly goes where.

My entities include multiple surveys, each with different questions and
multiple answers, and details about the organisation filling in the survey.
Answers can be in a variety of forms (yes/no, write in the blank, multiple
choice and multiple choice where they can choose 'other' and specify).

My structure at the moment is (and I apologise now for the dreadful
explanation): a table with the name of each questionnaire and notes about it.
For each questionnaire, this links to a table with the contact details and
country of respondent. This links to a table for each of the overarching
questions and then I've grouped the smaller questions around these by theme.
I know this is nothing like Duane's but it's what we were advised to do in
training!

What I was wondering about in my earlier post is if it's okay to have a one
field table. I've got a smaller question (yes/no) and I wasn't sure whether
the question that leads from it ("if yes,...) should be in a separate table.
I thought instinctively yes but my training lady put the fear into me about
one field tables and I tried reading up on it on the internet but I just seem
to tie myself more in knots.

I appreciate I'm probably beyond help at the moment (and doubly bad at
explaining my problems!) but anything you can offer would be really
appreciated. Thanks again for your help already, it's really given me more to
think about.




"Hannah" wrote:

I'm a bit of an access novice (training on basics, searching for help on the
rest) building a database for a research project. I've tried having a wee
look for this question but I can't spot it anywhere (probably because it's
obvious to everyone else).

I'm designing my tables and what to put in them and I've hit on something
I'm not very sure about. For some questions there's a yes or no question
(e.g. "do you eat cheese?) and a follow up if they say yes, theres an "if
yes, which of these types..." follow up question. I'm not sure whether I need
to structure these into two different tables or whether I can use one table
for both? I was planning to use tick boxes for these but if there's a better
way, please let me know! Thanks very much for help in advance - I don't know
where I'd be without these groups (well I do, somewhere not very good!)