report design

[Corinne]

I have to somehow design a report that shows the primary need of a special
need school pupil and I don't have a clue where to start. Each pupil could
have up to 4 different needs and I need to identify which is the main
problem. I can do that on paper by highlighting the need but how do I do it
in Access and only have that need show on a report. At the moment I have one
table with four fields, Cognition and Learning, Physical Sensory, Behaviour
Emotional, Communication Interaction. Each of these fields could have a
different type of problem identified in it. So as an example a pupil could
have general learning problems and behaviour problems. The behaviour would
then be his primary need. Another pupil could have Specific Learning
Difficulties and Behaviour problems but in this case Specific LD is the
primary need.
On the report I need to only have the primary need show.
Has anyone got an idea how to do this, maybe I need to change my table
design but I can't decide how.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you

 

[John Spencer (MVP)]

Sounds like a table design issue rather than a report issue. You might add a
table that looks something like

TableNeeds
PupilID:
ProblemType: for example, Cognition and Learning
SpecificNeed: for example, Behavior
PrimaryNeed: Yes/No

In addition, you might want a table that contains the choices for ProblemType
and another for SpecificNeeds choices to ensure more accuracy in the data entry.

Then you could use a query joining your pupils table to the needs table and have
it pick out the primary need from table needs.