I have databases containing students' responses to test items. Each record in the databases corresponds to a student. 40 of the fields in each database correspond to test items. The values in these text fields are "correct" or "incorrect."

How can I programmatically count each student's number of correct items on the test? In other words, I want to count within records, not between, the total number of correct items.

Many thanks in advance for any pointers!

If you have a calc field for each question that it's results returned "1" for correct, and "0" (zero) for incorrect, you can then have a "Total Correct" field for each record that is simply:

Question1 + Question2 +Question3 +Question4.... etc...

It will add up each correct calculation for a total number correct.

The 1 or 0 option is one that I make use of. I would also recommend putting test results into their own database, e.g. Test_Results.fp5, where each record is one test answer, related to the student by the student's unique key. Then, getting the total correct responses would be as simple as using the Sum() function. The next step beyond that would be to create a join file, say, Tests.fp5 which would allow you to track multiple tests and their results for each student.

Many thanks for the helpful suggestion. I'll give it a whirl.

Cheers!

It worked perfectly!

Many thanks.

An alternative way of doing it is using PatternCount e.g.

PatternCount(answer 1 & " " & answer 2 & " " & answer 3 & " " & answer 4 & " " & answer 5 & " " & answer 6 & " " & answer 7; "Correct")

/Keda