A questionnaire is more than merely a collection of questions. We have chosen the questions we want to include in the survey instrument, we have chosen the appropriate tools to deliver those questions and accept the responses, and we have decided on an overall design or “look and feel” for the presentation of these items. Next, we want to combine the items into a single questionnaire and add the elements that make it a usable survey instrument. This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Customization, including skips or routing, randomization, and fills

• Flow and navigation, including question numbering and action buttons

• Error messages

• Help and instructions

• Progress indicators and survey length

The topics in this chapter relate to the interactive elements of Web surveys. That is, what happens when the respondent enters a value into a field, presses a button, clicks on a link, or performs some other action? They are also about progress or movement through the instrument. The way many of these tools are designed and implemented depends on whether a scrolling or paging design is employed and whether active content (such as dynamic HTML or JavaScript) is used.

I've made a distinction between verbal and visual elements (see Chapter 3), between task and style elements (see Chapter 4), and between dynamic and static elements (see Chapter 3), but there is one final distinction that can be made, namely, between visible elements and hidden elements.