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Question Items are the default choice when entering a question most of the time. They must always include at least one response domain and question literal that should be able to stand alone contextually. Sometimes nearby text has to be concatentated on to inadequate question text, to display complete context. For example, the sentence 'Smoking:' on its own would not be enough for a complete question text, but 'Tell us about your habits: Smoking:' would be. Example 1 below shows a clear example of this, with 'how often did you see him in hospital' being concatenated on to '1st admission' to form a complete question textSee Question Items for more on concatenation.
However, if text that would provide clarity/context to a question item is contained entirely within a previous question, such as '1. Do you smoke? 2. How many a day?' these have to be documented as two separate question items, to maintain faithfulness to the original questionnaire (Principle 1).
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In general, individual questions are preferable to question grids when documenting metadata, due to the simplicity of the former. Question grids become the tool of choice when we are faced with a series of repeating questions such as a food list. A question grid is advantageous to use when:
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- There are 3 or more questions, and the length of the question plus the longest sub-question is more than 15 words or more.
- There are 2 questions, and the length of the question plus the longest sub-question is more than 25 words or more.
Note that if the sub-questions have varying response domains (for example the code list is not the same across the sub-questions, or they cannot be entered as a grid) it is often best practice to use multiple question items. This is regardless of how many sub-questions/statements there are or how long the question items will be. The exception to this is 'breaking off' questions with a mixed response (usually code list plus a text answer) from a group of sub-questions. The sub-questions without a mixed response can be input as a grid. The mixed response sub-questions are added as separate questions below the grid. See break-off questions for more details.
Example 1 Questionnaire: My Teenage Son 2004 (ALSPAC) question A4. d
This example shows a set of related questions displayed as separate question items. Question A4. (d) appears at first glance to be one question, but is actually three sub-questions. The overarching text 'How often did you see him while he was in hospital?' is common to all three of these questions, and so is concatenated on to each mention of 'admission'. This particular example also shows a situation that the inputter may assume is to be recorded using a Question Grid at first, due to the layout. However, it would only be appropriate to use a grid if there was more lengthly question text - 15 words or more.
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_04_mtsd):
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