When building Form-Based Worksheets, the key activity is the adding of Form Items, i.e. the very text areas, check boxes, drop-down menus (and others) that constitute the actual filling out of that form.

And as part of those Form Items, you can opt to give any given one a name:

Why would you bother?

When you name a Form Item, you then have a handle for referring to responses that get recorded as your clients fill out that particular part of that Worksheet.

Such responses can subsequently be used for any of the following purposes:

1. As a value that can be piped into a Metric
2. As a value used to compute another value (in the same worksheet)
3. As a field that can be reported on in the Data Lab
4. As a response that can subsequently be inserted into other content via Reflections

It's nice to be able to skip naming a given form input if the answers your clients will enter will only be useful as part of that Worksheet.

 

But if that data could be useful in other contexts, by all means give it a name!