In attempting to move questionnaire design from art to science, researchers use different evaluation techniques to help determine how well questions are working. Techniques such as behavior coding, respondent debriefing, interviewer debriefing, cognitive interviewing, and nonresponse analysis all provide information to help the questionnaire designer assess whether respondents understand questions as intended and whether they are able to provide adequate answers to them. In 1994, Presser and Blair evaluated some of these methods, concluding that behavior coding provided more reliable diagnoses of question difficulties than conventional pretests involving a small number of interviewers followed by an interviewer debriefing.

Others in Series

Working Paper

Who Lives Here?: The Use of Vignettes in Household Roster Research

January 01, 1996

Standard procedures for conducting household-based surveys require obtaining a list of household residents.

Working Paper

Encouraging Respondents to Use Visual Imagery to Improve Accuracy

January 01, 1996

This paper describes a research project exploring respondents' use of visual imagery in the AHS to report the rooms in their homes.

Working Paper

The Effect of Questionnaire Length on Response Rates

January 01, 1996

In an article about questionnaire length, it was argued that "common sense suggests that the shorter the questionnaire, the more likely a high response rate."

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Survey Methods Working Papers

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