QDDS - combining questionnaire development and survey documentation

QDDS is a general approach to create and design questionnaires and to document the changes and design decisions made in the process. This documentation is especially important for panels or other surveys that re-use instruments, as it allows the users to participate from the decisions already made and existing questionnaire elements. The alternative, to document the changes manually, is labor intensive and complex. Also, the goal is to have a multiple-purpose questionnaire editor that can be used to design surveys regardless of the target distribution system. Currently, we are using the DDI 2.1 standard as general file format and work on a switch to DDI 3.1. Using these standards makes it possible to import questionnaires into structured survey documentations without any loss of information. In this paper, we describe how we manage to hide the complexity of DDI by focusing on the main entities. We also describe the architecture and how it leads to the easy-to-use interface that allows primary researchers to use this tool efficiently, without in-depth documentation skills. Furthermore, we sketch out the necessary changes that are necessary to switch to DDI 3.1 and how that will improve the interaction with future information systems based on DDI 3.1. In the presentation on the last IASSIST we showed mainly the overall concept and reason for the support of DDI 3. For this IASSIST we want to show a first view on the actual solution and the corresponding changes on user interface level that are necessary.