As the vehicle of data collection, the questionnaire is one of the critical components in achieving high quality in a survey. The best of sampling schemes and estimation strategies will not yield accurate data if the answers provided by the respondent are not meaningful. During the last decade or so, there has been increased emphasis on building quality into the questionnaire design process through pretesting. This has been approached from an operational perspective in Federal government agencies (DeMaio, 1983; DeMaio et al, 1993; Willis, 1994; Dippo and Norwood, 1992) but it has been informed by theoretical work in the areas of cognitive psychology (Tourangeau, 1984; Ericsson and Simon, 1980, 1984) and social psychology (Cannell, Fowler, and Marquis, 1968; Turner and Martin, 1984).

Others in Series

Working Paper

Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD): Pretest Evaluation Report

December 19, 1997

Welfare reform legislation was passed and the Census Bureau was mandated to conduct a survey to evaluate welfare reform and its impact on the nation.

Working Paper

Within-Household Disagreements as a Source of Survey Coverage Error

1998

This paper draws on data from the Living Situation Survey.

Working Paper

Human-Computer Interface Usability in a Survey Organization

1998

We address the start-up of a usability research and testing capability at the Census Bureau.

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Survey Methods Working Papers

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