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People-Centred Technologies

Online Questionnaire Design

Broadly speaking, the NRC-IIT project, Online Questionnaire Design, aims to address the current state of support for online questionnaire development. Specifically, it looks to improve the provision of guidelines to assist developers when designing such questionnaires and to enhance technological support for their physical implementation and post-administration analysis.

Research Context

Online questionnaire design is at present guided (when guided at all) by long standing guidelines for paper-based questionnaire delivery. Online (web-based) questionnaire delivery can, however, widen the scope of possibilities available to the survey process.

This project draws on guidelines from a variety of disciplines to form a comprehensive set of guidelines specifically for web-based questionnaire design. It augments the sparse current support for online questionnaire design, integrating guidelines from web site design and paper-based questionnaire design to develop an extensive set of guidelines that support online questionnaire design and development.

On the basis of the guidelines, a framework will be developed to support systematic comparison of software designed to aid online questionnaire construction. The same framework will be used to complete an environmental scan of the tools available.

Research results of this project could have an impact on any domain in which questionnaire-based surveys are an appropriate tool; in particular, such sectors as e-Government and e-Democracy.

The Online Questionnaire Design project started in May 2003 and is ongoing.

Opportunities

Research opportunities: We would welcome anyone interested in the development of more sophisticated support for online questionnaire design & administration. In particular, we would like to hear from anyone interested in the development of linguistic-based support for the post-administration analysis of results and the investigation of how such support could impact on the improved design of such questionnaires. If interested, please contact the research contact listed below.
Technical transfer opportunities: Ultimately, we will be actively seeking IT firms who have the will and capability to commercialize the guidelines etc into a marketable online questionnaire design tool. Please contact the Business Development Officer listed below to discuss these opportunities.

Research Contact

Dr. Joanna Lumsden (Jo)
Research Officer
People-Centred Technologies
NRC Institute for Information Technology
46 Dineen Drive
Fredericton, NB E3B 9W4
Telephone: +1 (506) 444-0382
E-mail: Joanna Lumsden

Business Contact

Marc-Alain Mallet
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, New Brunswick
NRC Institute for Information Technology
46 Dineen Drive
Fredericton, NB E3B 9W4
Telephone: +1 (506) 444-0394
Fax: +1 (506) 452-3859
E-mail: Marc-Alain.Mallet@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca