The Questionnaire Design Tool (QDT) is one module in the software suite that comprises the IQML (Intelligent Questionnaire Markup Language) project. IQML is a 3-year, EU funded project, which is due to finish in April 2003 (IST-1999-10338). The general aim of IQML is to enable the creation and re-use of ‘metadata’ in the survey process and to innovate in the areas of the design and presentation of surveys.
The conceptual basis of the QDT lies in the notion of ‘re-use’. The QDT has been modelled to elicit re-usable ‘components’ in the questionnaire design process. This is achieved through the creation of ‘question type’ components, which serve as ‘templates’ for question components, and a ‘question bank’, which contains questions and associated components. These components form the basis of questionnaires.
The QDT software has been implemented using Java and XML. The advantage of using Java and XML lies in their ‘platform independence’ and extensibility respectively. The platform independence offered by Java ensures that the QDT will not be ‘bound’ to any particular computing environment and thus that the potential user base for the QDT will not be limited by such technological constraints. Extensibility, via the use of XML, ensures that the QDT program and it’s underlying model can grow and incorporate new and developing demands that may be made of it, without having to be re-designed from the bottom up.
The QDT has been designed with the intention that a survey producer from any organisation may use it. Due to the fact that the IQML project trialists and partners are drawn from a variety of survey producing backgrounds (NSI’s, market research, academic research), the QDT has been designed to cater for the generic needs of the survey producer.
Through the IQML project, it has been demonstrated that the QDT model can be mapped to software supporting the distribution of online questionnaires via the Internet. Compatibility with this method of survey distribution and collection is important with the probable expansion in this means of distribution / collection.
While the IQML project has focussed on outputting questionnaires in digital format via the Internet, the QDT model allows for the output of questionnaires in a variety of media formats (e.g. paper, web-based, telephone etc.). This flexibility allows the questionnaire designer to design their questionnaire for a specific format, or alternatively, to output the same questionnaire in different media formats, with the further possibility that different ‘contexts’ (e.g. the wording of specific questions) may be applied to the same questionnaire when output in different media formats.
This paper will present the QDT software and underlying model and in doing this will discuss the areas in which the model was fully implemented and those where further development is possible. It will consider the implications of the kind of diverse data capture and collection from a variety of sources that becomes possible through the use of the QDT (and associated software) and will use the conclusions of the evaluation of the final project trial as a basis for the discussion.
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