Questionnaire Programming

This chapters relates to the process of digitization of a questionnaire, and not to the process of developing content for Questionnaire Design.

Read First

You should never start coding your survey before you have a fairly completed

The first rule of Questionnaire Programming is to not start programming your survey before you have questionnaire already. If you do not have a questionnaire, go to Questionnaire Design

Articles often forgotten

• Questionnaire Encryption - read before creating your questionnaire
• Survey Data Quality Checks - read while you are programming your questionnaire. Best practice is to develop data quality checks in parallel to coding your the questionnaire.
• Updating a Questionnaire already in use - Important best practice when you realize that you need to make changes to a survey you have started to use in the field already.

Topics

The following topics are ordered in a more or less chronological order

Choosing Software

There are several software on the market for digital data collection. At DIME we have built up

Using the Server

You can either set up your own server, but if your project is a DIME project you can use our development server DIMEtest until your project require its own server

Create a questionnaire

The easiest way to start with one of SurveyCTO's template forms. You can either program your questionnaire in the form builder or in an Excel sheet. We recommend that your default approach is the Excel Sheet. Regardless what method you use to program your questionnaire, and regardless if you start with an empty instrument or use a survey that have been used before, it is important that you encrypt your questionnaires.

How to start coding your questionnaire

Before starting the programming, read this article on form settings first.

The organization of how to approach coding a questionnaire (or perhaps the lack therefore) is in our experience the most common reason for serious bugs that should have been avoidable.