Research on the Census of Construction Industries questionnaire represents the Bureau’s first attempt to conduct research on the design of economic census forms. The goal of this research was to develop guidelines for improving the Census of Construction Industries forms. This paper describes both the methods that we used and some research results. Initially, we conducted a preliminary forms appraisal and cognitive interviews with respondents. Following this, we designed four alternative forms and conducted a test of these forms. In this paper, we limit the discussion to selected items from two of the newly-designed forms.