# Pre-entry forms Pre-entry forms are questionnaires used to gather data from parents and school which can be entered into the **3di** prior to running the interview with the parents. To make it easy to transcribe to the **3di** from a pre-entry form, the Route Explorer provides a [Route](/using-the-software/routes.md) corresponding to each form: the Route will present the **3di** questions in precisely the order in which they appear on the pre-entry form. ## The three sources of pre-entry forms 1. Provided pre-entry forms: some forms are provided in the **PreEntry** folder within your **3di** [installation folder](/setup/installation.md#the-installation-folder). 2. Pre-entry forms generated from the [System Routes](/using-the-software/routes.md) which come with the **3di**. 3. Pre-entry forms generated from any [Custom Routes](/using-the-software/routes.md#creating-custom-routes-with-the-route-editor) you have created within the **3di**. ## Creating a pre-entry form from any Route All the Route dropdowns in the **3di** list both the system Routes and your custom Routes, and for any of the Routes you can generate a pre-entry form tailored to any particular child. Here’s the procedure: 1. Go to the **Case Manager**. 2. Select the child from the **Find** dropdown. 3. Make your choice from the system and custom Routes offered by the **Question by question** dropdown in the lower‑right section of the **Case Manager**. 4. Click the **Pre-entry Form** button. You will be prompted to say whether or not you want to include guidance notes for the parents – see below. 5. When the form opens (it can take a noticeable time), use the radio buttons at the top-right to choose the format of the final document:\ `rtf = Word format`\ `pdf = Acrobat format`\ `xls = Excel format`\ The different formats lend themselves to different particular purposes: you may need to experiment. 6. Click the **Export Form** button. The form will be saved to the child’s document folder, and also displayed on the screen in the chosen format. ### Improving a pre-entry form Although an automatically generated pre-entry form can be used as it stands, there are several things you may sometimes want to do, including the following: * Add a preamble to the form, briefing the parents on what to do. * Add a header and/or footer – with page numbers, for example. * Condense or otherwise adjust the layout. * For at least some Repeating Answer questions: * Create more room for responses by inserting new lines. * Copy and paste the answer framework so that several sets of responses can be recorded without the parents needing to use the reverse of the sheet or extra sheets. * Edit the content for a “special case” child - anything from adding notes to removing or rewording some items. ### Making a generic pre-entry form The previous steps describe how to make a pre-entry form for a particular child, and will include text tailored to the child's name. You may want to make a “generic” form that can be used for any child. * If you plan to create several different forms, it’s a good idea to create a Backend for that and other adventurous purposes; you might call it WorkBench. * In the **Case Manager** create a child with a **Forenow** (the familiar version of the forename) which is unlikely to appear as a word or part-word anywhere else in the interview text – actually, 'Forenow' might be a good choice! Later, when you open your generic form in Word, you can do a find and replace to substitute the name of any actual child: your generic form can be tailored in seconds. * To do a find and replace in Word, use the shortcut: **\** * You’ll realise that if you aim for a generic form which can be tailored to any given child, you will actually need **two forms** – one where you make the child a boy in the **Case Manager**, the other where you change the child to a girl and repeat the exercise; that way one form will have male pronouns, the other female pronouns. * Open an interview with your “generic” child, and for any question on the Route for which you would like any kind of explanatory or other text to appear on the interview form as part of that question, use the 3di's **Notes** system to enter that text. It will be reproduced at the bottom of the answer space for the question in the generated pre-entry form. ## Transcribing from a pre-entry form Having opened the child’s interview in the **3di**, open the **Route Explorer** (click the road-map icon on the **3di** toolbar), and select the required route from the **Choose route** dropdown. You will be taken to the first unanswered question on the route. Use the [keyboard shortcuts](/using-the-software/conducting-an-interview.md#keyboard-shortcuts) to move along the route efficiently and speed up your data entry. ## Provided pre-entry forms The provided pre-entry forms are named to reflect their Routes. #### *ADHD\_behaviour\_school\_nameless\_unisex\_yymmdd* Completed by the parents or carers. #### *CCC\_named\_boy\_yymmdd* and *CCC\_named\_girl\_yymmdd* Children’s Communication Checklist\ (Dorothy Bishop, 1998, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry) Completed by the parents or carers and also by the school. Choose the form for the child’s gender and do a find and replace to substitute your child’s forename for the boy Ziggy or the girl Capucine. The CCC is described in the second reference Tab of your training course manual, and also in the **CCC table interpretation** document in the **Reference** folder within your **3di** installation folder. Although given to both parents and school, the **3di** accommodates only one set of CCC responses: the parents’ responses should be used unless there is reason to believe that their responses are heavily biased. Scoring the school responses to the CCC can be achieved in either of two ways: 1. You can create a second “dummy” interview with the child and complete in that interview *just the CCC questions as rated by the school*. You then generate a full Report from that interview, and pay heed only to the CCC table within it. If the child is called Sam Bloggs, you might call the child created in the **Case Manager** for the dummy interview Sam Bloggs\_CCC\_School. This naming strategy makes it easier to find the dummy interview when you are choosing Sam Bloggs from the **Find:** dropdown at the top of the **Case Manager** (because Bloggs\_CCC\_School will appear immediately below Bloggs) – and you get a reminder that there *is* such an interview! 2. Dorothy Bishop's Excel scoring spreadsheet for the Children's Communication Checklist, which can be found online. Probably the spreadsheet is useful only if you have many CCC forms to process as a batch: the responses for each child occupy a single row (with the columns captioned by abbreviated questions), and you must enter numerical codes for the outcomes. Moreover, the spreadsheet declines to give scores for any CCC subscale (there are nine in all) for which under 80% of the items have been answered, whereas the **3di** pro-rates subscale scores from the answered questions, reports the number of unanswered questions, and leaves you to decide what validity should be attached to the results. ## Converting multi-line option sets to a more compact format To make your pre-entry forms more compact you can convert multi-line option sets to continuous text. Try this out by creating a pre-entry form for the Route **ASD\_brief** and then using Word’s **Find and Replace** dialog in Word (shortcut **\**) with the three pairs of text below: copy the first in a pair to the **Find** box and the second to the **Replace** box. Make sure you end each copy immediately after the last visible character. {% hint style="info" %} The below templates make use of the fact that `^p` signifies 'paragraph break' in Word. {% endhint %} {% hint style="info" %} If the text you have selected appears to include a “space” (actually a newline character) at the end, holding down **\** and tapping **<🡨>** will drop that “space” – assuming you made your original selection by dragging from left to right. {% endhint %} Find: `[.....] often^p^p[.....] rarely^p^p[.....] never` Replace: `^poften / rarely / never` Find: `[.....] no, does not apply^p^p[.....] applies somewhat^p^p[.....] definitely applies^p^p[.....] unable to judge (not applicable)` Replace: `^pno, does not apply / applies somewhat / definitely applies / unable to judge (not applicable)` Find: `[.....] definitely^p^p[.....] possibly^p^p[.....] no` Replace: `^pdefinitely / possibly / no` Once you’ve tried the process for converting multi-line options sets to continuous text you’ll be able to follow this brief account of how you could do the same thing for any option set: To create the **Find** string: 1. Copy and paste the multi-line version from any automatically generated PreEntry form which uses that option set. 2. Modify the pasted copy by replacing each newline character (it’s the last on each line) with **^p^p**. Your several lines will progressively collapse into a single “paragraph”. It helps to tick **Show all formatting marks** via **File → Options → Display** – that way you’ll see exactly what you’re working with, including newline characters (`¶`) and spaces (`·`). To build the **Replace** string: 1. Add a blank line after your edited **Find** string and then begin with the characters **^p** (look at the provided **Replace** strings if you’re unsure how this should look). 2. 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