Interviewer Instructions
Key Considerations
Instructions are text that helps the respondent answer the question.
They are usually a “doing” thing.
No more than one instruction per question in paper questionnaires.
Interviewer instructions are pieces of text that give further information to the respondent about the way to ask or answer a question. It provides important information for interpreting the answers and are usually worded as a “doing” thing. The most common example of this is 'Tick all that apply' or 'Tick one option only'. It exists as part of a Question Item or Question Grid, and cannot exist independently of a question.
Interviewer instructions are entered as part of the creating a question. When building a question, the instruction text is entered in the second field of the page under 'Instruction'. The following are some points to consider when dealing with instructions.
The format and position of interviewer instructions varies from questionnaire to questionnaire. Depending on where the instruction appears, we decide whether it should be entered as an instruction or as part of the question literal. When the text follows on the same line as the question literal, it is entered as part of the question literal (see Example 2). When there is a carriage return (i.e. it is on a separate line), the text may be entered as an instruction (see Example 1). When the text is on a separate line, the formatting of the text (i.e., bold, in brackets) can indicated whether the text should be entered as an instruction or a statement.
Example 1 Questionnaire: NSHD University Questionnaire 1964
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (nshd_64_cmu):
Example 2 Questionnaire: ALSPAC My Daughter's Well Being
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (alspac_99_msdw):
One instruction per question (paper questionnaires)
Some questions have more than one instruction. However, when entering a paper questionnaire, only one instruction may be entered into Archivist. Therefore, additional instructions need to be entered as statements or as part of the question literal depending on the nature of the text. Multiple instructions must not be concatenated (see Example 3).
The decision of choosing which text is entered as an instruction is discretionary. This is because the way instructions are used in questionnaires can vary greatly, and therefore it is difficult to apply a consistent protocol. Some salient features of text entered as instructions are: the text is often shorter, practically-orientated (in answering the question), and positioned closer to the response domain. If the text is entered as a statement, then it is positioned after the question construct.
Example 3 Questionnaire: BCS Home and All That 1986
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (bcs_86_haat):
Repeated instructions
The third principle from the Principles for Archiving Metadata states only to record what is contained within the questionnaire. However, when the same instruction appears twice in a question, it only needs to be entered once and not repeated (see Example 4 where 'Tick all that apply' appears twice in the questionnaire).
Example 4 Questionnaire: BCS Life and Leisure 1986
Questionnaire layout:
Archivist view (bcs_86_lal):