How can I calculate a negative score to equal 0?

Question

I have a test that includes a question that is a "Select all that apply" question.  There are 3 correct answers and 2 incorrect answers.

Each question is worth 4 points.  For the correct answers I score them with +1.33.  For incorrect answers I score them with -2.

I do not want to limit the number of selections, so they are able to select all 5, and this would give them a score of -.01.  I can fix that by setting one of the correct answers to +1.34.  But, if they select 2 incorrect answers, only, then they will have a score of -4.

What I want to do is have all negative scores to be calculated as a 0 for that question (something like,,, if SCORE<0, then SCORE=0).  Is this possible and if so how would I do it?

Maybe there is an easier way that I have not thought of, so I'm open to other suggestions as well.

Rex · Accepted Answer

Ok, I have a work around, although it may not be perfect it will work for me for now.  As I get more familiar with qualtrics I may be able to get it all completed inside of qualtrics, but I had to bring in excel to get my final calculation.  I had 5 questions on the 25 question exam that were "Select All that Apply" type questions.  So I created 5 additional Score Categories (SC1, SC2...SC5) one for each of the 5 questions.  I took these 5 questions out of the standard Score (SC0) category by just not assigning a value to those 5 questions.For each question, I would allocate the amount of points that would total the score for that question both positive and negative.  Each question is worth 4 points.  So if I had 4 correct answers for that question each correct answer would be +1 point (total +4).  If I had 2 incorrect answers on that question each incorrect answer would be worth -2 points (total -4).When I export the data I have 6 columns for score.  SC0, is for all questions that are not "Select All that apply" types, and SC1-SC5 for each of the "Select All that apply" type questions.In Excel, I want to add up all of these scores, but if you recall I want to have negative scores calculated to 0.   So I have a master score sheet that will perform this calculation.I copy in the exported data file into my master score spread sheet, in the "Data" worksheet.  Then on my "Final Score" worksheet I have the calculation below.  Column "Data!AS4" is the data from SC0, "Data!AT4" is the data from SC1...on so on.   =SUM(Data!AS4+IF(Data!AT4<0,0,Data!AT4)+IF(Data!AU4<0,0,Data!AU4)+IF(Data!AV4<0,0,Data!AV4)+IF(Data!AW4<0,0,Data!AW4)+IF(Data!AX4<0,0,Data!AX4))I hope this makes sense and helps someone else out there who may have this problem.   If you have a better work around please feel free to share.

Rex · Answer

Thank you @bstrahin .  Very interesting.  I have tried this on a sample set and there are some roadblocks or challenges that I have.I suspect that each question would have to be in its own block to be able to do this?  I had all the questions in 1 block to eliminate the need of the user to have to select >>NEXT after each question.  To have the final score calculated I suppose that I would have to generate a running total of RoundedScore.I cannot just Add RoundedScore to Score, so as you mentioned I would have to calculate RoundedScore for every question.  Thank you for your help, and I think this would work fine for a one time situation.  My concern is as the test changes over time, I would have to do this each time a question changes.  I was hoping there might be an easier solution.  PS...the test has 25 questions.

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