Question Items
Key Considerations
Question items must have a response domain.
The question text should contain any important contextual information (timeframes etc).
A question item contains a single question along with the response domain and any instructions.
The question item is comprised of several elements:
Label: The name of the question item (e.g. 'qi_A3')
Instruction: Instructional text that helps the respondent to answer the question (e.g. 'If none, write 00 in the boxes')
Literal: The question text (e.g. 'Do you have a favourite fruit?'). This must contain any important context for answering the question, particularly relating to the who, when and where.
Response Domains: The opportunities provided to the respondent to answer (e.g. 1=Yes, 2=No)
To build a question item you must first create the answer, known in Archivist as the response domain. In the case of Example 1, it requires the creation of a code list, and in Example 2, it requires the creation of a Numeric Answer.
Response domains are not limited to one per question, as some questions may offer the choice of how to answer with multiple response domains, such as having a code list and a numeric answer response, or a code list with a text response (see Example 3).
Example 1 Questionnaire: ALSPAC All Around Me
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_03_aam):
Example 2 Questionnaire: ALSPAC My Teeth
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_99_mt):
Example 3 Questionnaire: NCDS Parental interview form
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (ncds_74_pq):
Concatenation in question literals
In Example 3 above, the important context is included in the question literal is the study child (who) and evenings (when). In some cases, additional text not contained in the question literal needs to be concatenated to the question literal to provide essential context. For instance, a statement before a question may contain important context. Rather than add a statement in Archivist, this text is concatenated to the question literal. In Example 4 below, the statement before question 22 contains essential contextual information about the time period (when) covered by the question “Have you recently…”. So, this statement is concatenated to the following question literals.
Example 4 Questionnaire: WHII - Health Survey 12
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (whii_15_hs):
An exception to this rule is when the text that provides the context is entirely contained within another question item upon which the question is dependent. This often happens when the text is in a condition based on the first question. In Example 5, the question asks “Did you knock any teeth out?”, and then the next question asks “How many did you knock out?”, which is inside the condition “If yes”. The second question lacks context on its own, but as it is positioned within a condition which connects it to the previous question that provides context, this is acceptable. Adding text to the second question would violate the Principle of not improving the questionnaire.
Example 5 Questionnaire: ALSPAC Teeth and Things
Questionnaire layout:
If presented with sub-questions, like Example 6, you must concatenate the question literal to produce the most concise method of documenting the question and provide the essential contextual information. The question literal should be made up of the common text for all questions followed by the sub-question text.
In Example 6, the question literal is "How would you assess the health of your child nowadays?". This is concatenated with the sub-question text "in the past month" and "in the past year" to produce the two separate question items “qi_A1_i” and “qi_A1_ii”. The response domain will be a code list with the following codes and categories: "1 - very healthy; 2- healthy, but a few minor problems; 3 sometimes quite ill; 4 almost always unwell". This flags up an important principle: do not be seduced by the presentation of the question, as Example 6 could wrongfully be misinterpreted as a grid.
Example 6 Questionnaire: ALSPAC My Son / Daughter's Health & Behaviour
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_94_msdhab):
No question text
There are occasions when a question only contains a code list with no question text. In these circumstances, the code list category text is repeated to create a question literal. To indicate that these are options, we use a / in between. See example 8 below. This only works when there are a couple of short categories. In cases where there are several long code list categories, this approach may not be suitable, and so the question number would be used as the question literal instead.
Example 7 Questionnaire ALSPAC My World
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_00_mw):
Reusing question items
When constructing the layout of a questionnaire in Archivist, question items are attached to question constructs. Generally, both question constructs and question items are unique with unique labels. However, if a question is asked more than once in a questionnaire, there are specific circumstances where a question item may be reused when creating question constructs.
For this to apply, 4 criteria must be met:
The question literals must identical.
The response domains must identical.
The interviewee must be identical.
The question must only be collecting data for one variable (for example, if a question is asked and not answered by the respondent at the start of the questionnaire, and is repeated later on to offer them a chance to provide a response).
The question construct labels must always be unique, as they represent the positioning of the identical questions in the questionnaire. In Example 8, the exact same question with the exact same answer is asked twice in the questionnaire.
Example 8 Questionnaire: SWS Initial
Questionnaire layout:
Page 1:
Page 28:
Archivist Build / Constructs (SWS_1_bio):
Archivist view (sws_1_bio):