Building and deploying a survey via R

Edited snippets from several different LiveStreams exploring `surveydown`, an R package focused on surveys. We followed the package author recommendations which culminated in 10 tangible steps:

1. install the `surveydown` package from CRAN

2. Create a template survey within an empty project directory (surveydown::sd_create_survey("path/to/folder")

3. Open the project & look for your 2 necessary template files: `survey.qmd` and `app.R`

4. Modify content within the `survey.qmd` file to reflect your survey content (items and responses)

5. Run the `app.R` file template (within your project folder) for a preview of your survey*

6. Create a Supabase account (if that's the service you'd like to use to store your responses)

7. Set the Supabase password within your project folder (surveydown::sd_set_password("your_supabase_password")

8. Transfer the 4 Supabase "Connection Parameters" (Host, Database Name, Port, and User) into your `app.R` file

9. Launch the survey by hosting the rendered survey somewhere (Posit has a few free options for low volume surveys)

10. Access survey responses from Supabase -- look for your named data table

Don't expect the "preview" of your survey content (e.g., a rendering of the `survey.qmd` file) to be an accurate representation of what your survey will "look like" from the perspective of the respondents.

Extra bits:

A) CSS can be applied for customization of item styling (e.g., font, color, background, etc)

B) Conditional logic (e.g., skip question administration) can be built into the `app.R` file -- check out the "Survey Tinkering" LiveStream for an application: • R for Authoring Open Office Hours #56...

More information on `surveydown` is available at https://surveydown.org/ -- their workflow is changing but backwards-compatible, so your content specifications can be made more & more efficient if you wish

Original (unedited) LiveStreams documenting our exploration into `surveydown` can be accessed below:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wyejw96PM8 (intro)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG_dS6Xfn4Q (.qmd)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmXjSxoELao (Shiny)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K1ChH--bqM&t=15s (data)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgW87oQKGQ8&t=664s (deploy)

There's an additional video on tinkering and tweaking (e.g., conditional logic) that we did not include in the current summary:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB_31sKVys0&t=4s (tweaking and tinkering)

00:00 - Setup (Installations)
01:12 - Item specifications (.qmd)
01:37 - Add response options (.qmd)
01:53 - Respondent view
02:32 - Render .qmd via Shiny
03:04 - Tweak survey appearance
04:16 - Overview
04:54 - Data storage (Supabase)
05:50 - app.R content from Supabase
07:00 - publishing via shinyapps
07:19 - Ian provides survey responses
07:42 - retrieving responses from Supabase
08:08 - exporting .csv from Supabase
08:17 - reading in .csv and looking at data