Data Export Formats

MQUAD supports three primary data export formats for downstream analysis in tools like Excel, Stata, or R.

CSV Format

• Delimiter: Comma (,)
• Text qualifier: Double quotes (")
• Header row: Included by default
• Encoding: UTF-8
• File extension: .csv

Example CSV structure:

"respondent_id","submitted_at","q1_name","q2_age","q3_satisfaction"
"R-001","2025-01-15T10:30:00Z","Alice Johnson",34,"Very Satisfied"

Excel Format (.xlsx)

• Sheets: Single sheet containing all response data
• Data types: Numeric values are stored as numbers; dates as Excel date values
• Multiple choice: Multi-select answers are pipe-delimited (|)
• File extension: .xlsx

JSON Format

• Structure: Array of response objects containing headers and the survey data object.
• Encoding: UTF-8
• File extension: .json

Example JSON structure:

[
  {
    "id": "uuid-string",
    "survey_id": "uuid-string",
    "data": {
      "q1_name": "Alice Johnson",
      "q2_age": 34
    },
    "submitted_at": "2025-01-15T10:30:00Z"
  }
]

Missing Values Handling

Missing values are represented as follows in each format:

Encoding Notes

All exports use UTF-8 encoding to ensure compatibility with international character sets. When opening CSV files in older versions of Excel, use the Import from Text/CSV wizard and select 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).