THE ROUTING STRUCTURE OF QUESTIONNAIRES

1
THE ROUTING STRUCTURE OF QUESTIONNAIRES

• Jelke Bethlehem
• Statistics Netherlands
• Department of Statistical Methods

2
The documentation problem

• The trend
• Computers become more and more powerful
• Size of electronic questionnaires increases
• Complexity of electronic questionnaires increases
• The question
• How to make human-readable documentation?
• The dilemma
• Exact, but unreadable documentation
• Not exact, but readable documentation

3
Overview

• Routing in paper questionnaires
• Routing in electronic questionnaire
• What kind of documentation is required?
• The TADEQ project
• Some preliminary ideas
• The XML backbone
• Documentation examples
• Analysis functions

4
Paper questionnaire

• 1. What is your sex?
• Male . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Goto 3
• Female . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
• 2. Have you ever given birth?
• Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
• No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
• 3. How old are you? years
• Interviewer If younger than 17 then STOP
• 4. What is your marital status?
• Never been married . . . . . . . 1 Goto 6
• Married . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
• Separated . . . . . . . . . . . 3
• Divorced . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Goto 6
• Widowed . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Goto 6

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CasesExample

• gtSexlt
• What is your sex?
• lt1gt Male goto Age
• lt2gt Female
• _at_
• gtBirthlt
• Have you ever given birth?
• lt1gt Yes
• lt2gt No
• _at_
• gtAgelt
• How old are you?
• lt0..120gt
• _at_
• _at_ if Age lt lt17gt goto Endgt
• gtMarStatlt
• What is your marital status?
• lt1gt Never been married goto Work
• lt2gt Married

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BlaiseExample

• DATAMODEL Example
• FIELDS
• Sex "What is your sex?" (Male, Female)
• Birth "Have you ever given birth?" (Yes, No)
• Age "How old are you?" 0..120
• MarStat "What is your marital status?"
• (NeverMar "Never been married",
• Married "Married",
• Separate "Separated",
• Divorced "Divorced",
• Widowed "Widowed")
• Spouse "What is your spouse's age?" 0..120
• Work "Are you working for pay or profit?"
  (Yes, No)
• RULES
• Sex
• IF Sex Female THEN Birth ENDIF
• Age
• IF Age gt 17 THEN

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What kind of documentation?

• Question documentation
• Details of all questions
• Who answered which question?
• Less attention for global routing structure
• Textual documentation
• Routing documentation
• Globale routing structure
• Conditions for every possible path
• Less attention for question details
• Graphical documentation

8
TADEQ Project

• Tool for the Analysis and Documentation of
  Electronic Questionnaires.
• Documentation automatically generated.
• Both paper or electronic documentation.
• Different documentation for different users.
• Analyses of routing structure.
• Supports several packages (including Blaise)
• Financed by Fourth Framework of the EU.

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TADEQ Project Partners

• Statistics Netherlands (NL)
• Overall co-ordination
• Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik (D)
• Graph drawing algorithms
• Office for National Statistics (UK)
• User survey, Test co-ordination
• Statistics Finland (SF)
• Testing
• Instituto Nacional de Estatística (P)
• Testing

10
Some preliminary ideas

• Structure viewer
• Starting point of the tool
• Routing graph
• Focus on routing structure
• Limited amount of question information
• List of questions
• Focus on questions
• Specification of universe of each question
• No routing information
• Hybrid approach
• Routing graph of left page
• Question details on right page

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TADEQ activities

• User requirements survey
• Evaluation of existing CAI software
• Design of TADEQ neutral interface format
• Prototype of documentation tool
• Adding analysis functions

12
Tentative architecture
Blaise metadata
Other CAI software
XML
Structure viewer
Text
XSL Stylesheet
Graph
Hybrid
13
XML

• Successor of HTML (?).
• Emerging standard for documentation and meta-data
  (Data Documentation Initiative).
• Defines structure, not layout.
• User-defined tags.
• Parser (DLL) available in Internet Explorer 5.
• Layout defined by stylesheet (CSS, XSL).

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Example XML
ltQuestionnaire id"Example"gt ltQobject
Number"1" Name"Sex"gt ltQuestgt
ltQtextgtltWhat is your sex?gtlt/Qtextgt ltEnumgt
ltItem Code"1"gtMalelt/Itemgt ltItem
Code"2"gtFemalelt/Itemgt lt/Enumgt
lt/Questgt lt/Qobjectgt ltQobject Number"2"
Name"If"gt ltSplitgt ltBoolgtSex
Femalelt/Boolgt ltIfTruegt
ltQuestionnaire Id"then"gt ltQobject
Number"5" Name"Birth"gt ltQuestgt
lt/Questgt
lt/Qobjectgt
lt/Questionnairegt lt/IfTruegt
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Using the XML file

• Parser available in Internet Explorer 5
• DLL file
• Develop dedicated tool in C / VB / Delphi
• Textual tool - based on BAD (ONS)
• Graphical tool - based on ArchEd (MPI)
• XSL stylesheet
• No programming required
• Can be adapted by users
• Different stylesheets for one XML file

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Output exampleStructure viewer

• Folded Unfolded

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Output ExampleList of questions

• Sex
• What is your sex?
• (1) Male
• (2) Female
• ASK IF
• Sex Female
• Birth
• Have you ever given birth?
• (1) Yes
• (2) )No
• Age
• How old are you?
• 0..120
• ASK IF
• AGE gt 17
• MarStat

ASK IF AND AGE gt 17 AND (MarStat Married)OR
(MarStat Separate) Spouse What is
your spouse's age? 0..120 Ask IF AGE gt 17 Work
Are you working for pay or profit (1) Yes (2)
)No
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Output example Routing graph
PART 2
Sex What is your sex?
MarStat Marital status?
SexFemale
SexOther
MarStatMarried MarStatSepar
MarStatOther
Birth Ever given birth?
Age How old are you ?
Spouse Age of spouse ?
Age gt 17
Age Other
Work Are you working ?
END
PART 2
END
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Possible analysis functions

• Impossible routes
• Answer frequencies of questions
• Weighted length of possible paths
• Work in progress !