Variable Types

The available variable types are as follows (go to Mapping Variables for more information):

System Variables
Forsta variable name	Description	Triple-S
respid, responseid	ID of respondent and response respectively. respid - a system-generated sequential number, given to each respondent when the respondent data is uploaded to the survey. responseid - a system-generated sequential number, given to each respondent when responses are added, either by surveys/interviews or by data processing. The relation between respid and responseid is handled in a system table (response_control). Note: respid is allocated according to the order in which the respondents are added to the survey, whilst responseid is allocated according to the order in which the various respondents access the survey to reply to it or the response data is added by data processing. Any apparent correlation between the two values is therefore entirely coincidental unless you have a clean, open survey. Then respid and responseid are both added as the survey is accessed so will be in sync.	quantity.
rowguid	used for matching rows when writing data from data sources.	character.
status	status of the interview.	character.
interview_start, interview_end, last_touched, lastcomplete	date and time of corresponding events.	will be split into pairs of date + time variables, e.g. interview_start (for date) and interview_start_time (for time).
linkvar<variable_name>	linking variable that appears in both child and parent levels of Templates with hierarchies.	character.

Common Variables
Forsta variable type	Description	Triple-S
single	categorical with one response allowed.	single.
multi	categorical with any number of responses.	multiple.
open text	character value.	character.
open text numeric	numeric value (integer or real).	quantity.
grid		will be split into a set of single variables, one for each element in the answer list.
loop	loop variable.	single.
multi open text	character value.	will be split into a set of character variables, one for each element in the answer list.
multi numeric	numeric value (integer or real).	will be split into a set of quantity variables, one for each element in the answer list.
multi ranking	numeric value (integer or real).	will be split into a set of quantity variables, one for each element in the answer list.
other, specify fields	character value.	character.

Go also to http://www.triple-s.org/ for details.