QDDS-Documenting Survey Questionnaires throughout their Lifecycle

Questionnaire development is a multi-step process. At every step, decisions are made. This article describes a novel software which logs these decisions rationale for subsequent questionnaire modifications. Therefore it provides a graphical user interface to create and manipulate questionnaires, and to track the changes of the individual steps of the questionnaire development process. The detailed change information adds to the comprehensiveness of change reasons and supports extended external documentation. The documentation problem Deciding to do a survey means committing oneself to work through a myriad of issues each of which is critical to the ultimate success of the survey. Designing and developing new instruments constitutes a complex and lengthy process. The development of a questionnaire involves dozens of revisions, in particular if the purpose is a methodologically demanding study (see for example Czaja & Blair 2005; Groves et al. 2004; Leeuw, Hox & Dillman, 2008; Presser & Blair 1994; Sirken, Herrmann & Schechter et al. 1999; Schnell, Hill & Esser 2008). During the past 20 years, methods for testing and evaluating survey questionnaires have changed dramatically. In an effort to improve survey data quality, survey practitioners have significantly increased their use of an evolving set of questionnaire pre-testing methods (see for example Forsyth, Rothgeb & Willis, 2001; Presser, Cooper & Lessler et al. 2004; Tourangeau, R. 2003). The increasing use of cognitive psychology and methods derived thereof in the development of questionnaires for empirical social science research made single pre-tests obsolete. Due to the development of cognitive aspects of survey methodology, they have been superseded by a series of different pre-test methods.