Statements

Text within a questionnaire becomes a statement when it does not fulfill the criteria of becoming any of the other elements (sequence, instruction or condition) and does not provide any context to be part of the question text. Statements can be found throughout the questionnaire; at the beginning, middle and end and they are used for both questions and sequences. Statements are control constructs which are concerned with the positioning of items within a questionnaire.

Statements need to refer back to a question or a sequence to provide them with unique labels. This helps to understand their position within the questionnaire. Statements are labelled with the prefix ‘s_intro_…’. If there is a statement connected to a section then it always needs to be numbered even if there is only one, see second example from ALSPAC above. For more on labelling statements please see constructing label (IDs) for more information. 

Statements are positional and are independent of questionnaire. Their position is dependent upon where the statement text appears in the questionnaire for example if it appears before a question then it needs to be input before the question on Archivist and if the statement text is after a question in the questionnaire then it needs to be input after the question.

Statements can be related to either a question or a sequence and they need to labelled and positioned accordingly. See example 1 for when the statement is labelled after the question because it is specific to that question. Note also that it has been input before the question on archivist to match the questionnaire layout.

Example 1 Questionnaire: My Son/Daughter’s Health and Behaviour 2000 (ALSPAC) question A14

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist view: alspac_00_msdh

Now see example 2 for when the statement is not just specific to a question alone but to an entire section:

 Example 2 Questionnaire: My Son/Daughter’s Health and Behaviour 2000 (ALSPAC) Section A

Archivist view: alspac_00_msdh:

The statement in example 2 is labelled not after the question but the section and this is because of the indication of the statement text. It has positioned not before but after the section heading as this is how it appears in the questionnaire layout.

Some questionnaires have a lot text at the beginning of a questionnaire explaining to the interviewee how to complete it as shown in example 3. In Archivist you will see that five seperate statements have been entered. This is because, in the case where you have a series of statements, they are seperated where a carriage return is used.

Example 3:  Questionnaire: Final Interview with Mother 1961 (NSHD) s_intro_vi to s_intro_x

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist view nshd_61_iwm:

Example 4 Questionnaire: Food and Things 2004 (ALSPAC) Section B

This is an example consisting of question text and statements. As the text is continuous, deciding which parts are included in the question text and which parts are included in the statement can be tricky. As the first paragraph contains text regarding what information the interviewer would like from the interviewee it is input as the question text. Whereas the second paragraph does not provide such information and it does not have anything that the first paragraph is contextually dependent on and is therefore entered as a statement. As question text cannot be seperate or split from their response domain note that the statement will appear after the whole question and not just after the text as shown in the questionnaire layout.

Note also that when constructing the id label for this statement, it's reference is the sequence 'Section B:...' and therefore the label should be entered as the following 's_SectionB_i'. It has also been numbered (_i) as all statements that are referenced back to a sequence need to be numbered even if there is only one statement.

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist view alspac_04_fat:

Statements sometimes carry contexually relevant text and therefore this text needs to be repeated in all of the questions following it which are related such as in example 5

Statements can also be mistaken for a sequence like in example 5 but it is entered as a statement because it does not fulfill the criteria of statement of there being a clear start and end.

Example 5 Questionnaire: Adult Self completion 2008 (US) s_q20 and s_q20_i

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist view us1_asc

Some statements have text that is contexually important information which then needs to be repeated within the question such as in Example 6:

Example 6 Questionnaire: Adult Self completion 2008 (US)

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist layout us1_ysc

This example shows a simple sentence before a question explaining what the next questions are about. The important context of ‘you and your family’ is repeated in the question. 

Finally some questions contain more than instruction which is not possible to input into Archivist. Therefore only one instruction is input and the remaining are entered as statements as shown in example 7:

Example 7: University Questionnaire 1964 (US) question 47_i-xii

Questionnaire layout:

Archivist view nshd_64_cmu

This example is of a question with more than one instruction. Each question is allowed only on instruction and therefore any other text that appears as an instruction to the question needs to be entered as part of another element (statement) or the question text. In this case, the first