Survey documentation is usually the last thing on the mind of researchers and analysts when they are designing an online survey for research. But honestly, it should be the first thing on their minds, because developing survey documentation before actually programming the survey software represents a good design practice. This blog post will give you robust examples of how to make excellent survey documentation that will facilitate easy analysis of the survey data.
Start Your Survey Documentation with a “Paper” Version
When designing an online survey, you need to make a “paper” mock-up first, that includes all the survey items and potential answers. By “paper”, I mean you have to use a simple word processing program like Microsoft Word or Google Docs and just list the items in order with their potential answers. The graphic below shows the beginning of a paper version of a survey.
Add Annotation to the Survey
It’s good to keep a clean copy of the “paper” version of your online survey. But then, you can “save as” and make an annotated copy. On the annotated copy, you can add notes about programming the survey.
In my opinion, the most important notes you need to annotate on this are the names of the data fields you are going to program for the items. This annotation is the only way you will later be able to surefire connect the survey items asked with the data in the answers. In other words, if you don’t do this, you will definitely get confused when it’s time to analyze the data. You’ll have to go back and create an annotated version to even begin to figure out how the items in the survey are connected to the data you downloaded from the survey software. The graphic below shows an example.
Spreadsheet Documentation
In addition to these documents, you will also need to set up tabular documentation in a spreadsheet. You will essentially be making a data dictionary for your survey dataset. What’s nice about spreadsheets is that they are extensible. You can add as many columns as you want to the main crosswalk between items and data field names, and you can also add as many tabs as you want to the spreadsheet for additional documentation.
Main Crosswalk
The primary purpose for the main crosswalk in your spreadsheet is to connect the items (from their wording in the survey) with the names you designated for each data field. There are other things you should document in the main crosswalk, the primary necessity is connecting the item wording with the data fields containing the answers. The graphic below shows an example of a main crosswalk.
Picklist Survey Documentation
An often overlooked type of survey documentation has to do with the values actually stored in a categorical variable to represent the levels of the variable the respondent chose. I document these in picklists on the other tabs in the spreadsheet that holds the main crosswalk. In other words, if the choices of answers are, “yes”, “no”, and “don’t know”, what are the values stored to represent each of these choices? What number is stored for “yes”, and what number for “no”, and what number for “don’t know”? The graphic below gives an example.
And if you are storing the actual text, you are in a world of hurt. You should not do that unless you want to spend extra hours adding these values as part of your analysis. It’s much easier for the analyst to be involved in the survey design so the survey can be programmed in the clearest way, and survey documentation can be developed as part of the design process.
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