Dynamic Form Design: How to render a question with an answer that is a list

Question

I wasn't even sure how to phrase this so you'll have to forgive me if this is a duplicate.

I have a form question, it can have be answered with one or more entities The entity is made up of four numbers, currently 4 textboxes side by side.

The two approaches I've come up with are

1. At the start you have a blank textboxes to enter the 4 numbers with an add button/link/image and the same for delete. When you click add 4 textboxes and delete button are created at the end of the list and the add button is moved from where it was to beside the blank answer.

So you end up with something like this

Stage 1: Question?    Answer + X

Stage 2: Question?    Answer   X
         Question?    Answer + X

1. At the start you have a blank place to enter the 4 numbers with a delete button/link/image beside it. Once you enter the 4 numbers, 4 textboxes and a delete button are automatically created at the end of the list.

Feel free to comment with questions if I haven't been clear enough. I'm looking for a good approach to this that won't confuse my very computer illiterate user and that will look professional.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

I must be missing something, but why not use a select statement (drop down list) or radio buttons?

Edit: Ok, now I understand what you want. You can:

1. Multiline textbox (textarea). Add a short explanation, like "one answer per line" or "separate your items by ';', like 'apple; peach; banana;'". This is quite intuitive as long as you tell the customer how to separate entries.

2. A few textboxes. Your current solution. Very annoying for people who want to make a list with more items than there are boxes.

3. Textboxes, but with a bit of javascript to add more text boxes as needed. It can look quite nifty.

4. One textbox, a "add" button and a bit of javascript. The user types an item, click on "add" and you display it in a list, while cleaning up the textbox.You also need to provide a way to remove answers too.

The right way depends of the question, the expected number of items per list, the type of users (can they grok solution 1?) and the design of your website. (are you already using javascript or is it a new barrier for your customers). Also, keep in mind what you want. If you are asking for the user to make a list of referrals, you don't want him to feel constrained to a couple answers, whereas if you are doing a survey, the opposite may be true.