Choices

The Choices tag is used to create a group of choices, with radio buttons or checkboxes. It can be used for single or multi-class classification. Also, it is used for advanced classification tasks where annotators can choose one or multiple answers.

Choices can have dynamic value to load labels from task. This task data should contain a list of options to create underlying <Choice>s. All the parameters from options will be transferred to corresponding tags.

The Choices tag can be used with any data types.

Parameters

Param	Type	Default	Description
name	string		Name of the group of choices
toName	string		Name of the data item that you want to label
[choice]	single | single-radio | multiple	single	Single or multi-class classification
[showInline]	boolean	false	Show choices in the same visual line
[required]	boolean	false	Validate whether a choice has been selected
[requiredMessage]	string		Show a message if validation fails
[visibleWhen]	region-selected | no-region-selected | choice-selected | choice-unselected		Control visibility of the choices. Can also be used with the when* parameters below to narrow down visibility
[whenTagName]	string		Use with visibleWhen. Narrow down visibility by name of the tag. For regions, use the name of the object tag, for choices, use the name of the choices tag
[whenLabelValue]	string		Use with visibleWhen="region-selected". Narrow down visibility by label value. Multiple values can be separated with commas
[whenChoiceValue]	string		Use with visibleWhen ("choice-selected" or "choice-unselected") and whenTagName, both are required. Narrow down visibility by choice value. Multiple values can be separated with commas
[perRegion]	boolean		Use this tag to select a choice for a specific region instead of the entire task
[perItem]	boolean		Use this tag to select a choice for a specific item inside the object instead of the whole object
[value]	string		Task data field containing a list of dynamically loaded choices (see example below)
[allowNested]	boolean		Allow to use children field in dynamic choices to nest them. Submitted result will contain array of arrays, every item is a list of values from topmost parent choice down to selected one.
[layout]	select | inline | vertical		Layout of the choices: select for dropdown/select box format, inline for horizontal single row display, vertical for vertically stacked display (default)
[randomize]	boolean	false	Shuffle the order in which Choice options are displayed to the annotator on every task open to reduce position bias. The shuffle is ephemeral (a fresh order on each task load and on every annotator’s session) and never affects serialized results - selecting a choice still serializes that choice’s configured value/alias. Auto-assigned hotkeys follow the visible order so the [1], [2], [3] hints always read sequentially top-to-bottom, eliminating muscle-memory bias toward any specific option. Explicit hotkey="..." on a <Choice> is honored unchanged. Only direct top-level <Choice> children participate in the shuffle: non-<Choice> siblings (<Header>, <View>, <HyperText>) keep their layout position, and nested choices (allowNested) stay nested inside their parent <Choice>.

Example

Basic text classification labeling configuration

<View>
  <Choices name="gender" toName="txt-1" choice="single-radio">
    <Choice alias="M" value="Male" />
    <Choice alias="F" value="Female" />
    <Choice alias="NB" value="Nonbinary" />
    <Choice alias="X" value="Other" />
  </Choices>
  <Text name="txt-1" value="John went to see Mary" />
</View>

Example (This config with dynamic labels)

Choices can be loaded dynamically from task data. It should be an array of objects with attributes. html can be used to show enriched content, it has higher priority than value, however value will be used in the exported result.

<View>
  <Audio name="audio" value="$audio" />
  <Choices name="transcription" toName="audio" value="$variants" />
</View>
<!-- {
  "data": {
    "variants": [
      { "value": "Do or doughnut. There is no try.", "html": "<img src='https://labelstud.io/images/logo.png'>" },
      { "value": "Do or do not. There is no trial.", "html": "<h1>You can use hypertext here</h2>" },
      { "value": "Do or do not. There is no try." },
      { "value": "Duo do not. There is no try." }
    ]
  }
} -->

Example (is equivalent to this config)

<View>
  <Audio name="audio" value="$audio" />
  <Choices name="transcription" toName="audio" value="$variants">
    <Choice value="Do or doughnut. There is no try." />
    <Choice value="Do or do not. There is no trial." />
    <Choice value="Do or do not. There is no try." />
    <Choice value="Duo do not. There is no try." />
  </Choices>
</View>