Writing and revising questionnaire design guidelines

This paper will focus on establishment survey questionnaire design guidelines. More specifically, it will discuss the process involved in transitioning a set of guidelines written for a broad, survey methodological audience to a more narrow, agency-specific audience of survey managers and analysts. The process involved the work of a team comprised of individuals from across the Census Bureau's Economic Directorate, working in a cooperative and collaborative manner. The team decided what needed to be added, modified, and deleted from the broad starting point, and determined how much of the theory and experimental evidence found in the literature was necessary to include in the guidelines. In addition to discussing the process, the paper will also describe the end result: a set of questionnaire design guidelines for the Economic Directorate.