Survey Question Bank
SQB news
11 March 2010 - Surveys and topics25 November 2009 - New questionnaire search
16 September 2009 - SQB developments
12 June 2009 - Introducing the SQB
11 March 2010 - Surveys and topics
The SQB unveiled two new suites of web pages earlier this month and added a significant number of survey documents to its questionnaire search.
A suite of pages on the major social surveys provides detail on over 50 surveys including an overview of each survey, direct links to documentation, datasets available via the ESDS, and publications based on the survey. In a first for the service, coverage extends to the key cross-national surveys and, following negotiations with the copyright holders, access to survey documents not held by the ESDS is provided.
In addition, a suite of pages on topics incorporates and extends the previous content produced by the University of Surrey. The revamped topics section is designed for those users who come to the service with a specific topic in mind and wish to see not only what questions have been asked in social surveys on that topic but also wish to understand the conceptual structure of a topic and the way it is reflected in the structuring of questions and survey instruments. Currently, there are 33 topics covered.
The popular questionnaire search now incorporates documentation from the majority of major surveys conducted since the mid-1990s. Over 70 survey series are included, a figure that will rise above 100 during 2010.
25 November 2009 - New questionnaire search
Our new questionnaire search has gone live today. Please note that whilst the functionality is live, until the New Year the search results will be limited to documentation from a small selection of recent surveys. For a wider search, continue to use the current search facility. That search will be retired in January 2010, once all the content has been moved over to the new search.
16 September 2009 - SQB developments
Visitors to the SQB pages have risen rapidly since we began counting them in June and we will soon be ready to launch new functionality and resources.
The SQB team continues to work hard on a new search function/interface that will appear at Locate questionnaires towards the end of Autumn. The interface will eventually allow users to search across the range of PDF documents held by the ESDS.
By Christmas, almost all the content of the former Qb will have been replaced with enhanced material that will sit within the new SQB formatted pages. Recently, we have been adding, and will continue to add, resources to the Data collection zone.
12 June 2009 - Introducing the SQB
Work has begun in earnest on expanding, extending and updating the SQB. The SQB now has three staff members in place - Jack Kneeshaw, Suzanne Barbalet and Marie Walter (see Key contacts) – and several new web pages organised around survey resources ‘zones’. These zones will be developed – with new functionality and new expert commentaries being added – in the second half of 2009.
Plans are also in place to overhaul the question bank and topics web pages. These plans involve extending the search facility to cover questionnaire documents across the full ESDS Data Catalogue and, for a selection of key, recent social surveys, allowing users to locate survey questions and then view responses to those questions as frequency outputs in the ESDS Nesstar Catalogue.
