How to refine skip patterns in a questionnaire?

Poorly designed skip patterns in questionnaires not only lead to respondent fatigue but also data missingness. Here’re 3 good practices:

1. If a paper survey, visually guide respondents by using directional arrows and clear + simple instructions. If a multilingual survey, keep in mind that Spanish “expands” (appears longer) and Chinese “contracts” (appears shorter), meaning they take up “real estate” differently on paper compared to English so you must format each questionnaire thoughtfully. For example, skip patterns may be designed to appear on the same page, but they may end up appearing on different pages in another language. (See literature: A Comparison of results from a Spanish and English mail survey: Effects of instruction placement on item missingness).
2. If an electronic survey, test the programmed skips EVERY TIME after a change is made to the instrument. Even a simple typo can cause havoc in branching.
3. Check the test data! If something looks strange, e.g. many men reported being pregnant, then it’s likely there is a skip issue.

SEE ALSO:

How to design questions that capture the right information?

How to resolve common usability issues?

What to do before pretesting data collection instruments?

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