Tailoring the Design of Web Questionnaires to the Completion Process in Business Surveys: About Audit trails, Eye-tracking and other methods

Data collection using electronic or web questionnaires brings new possibilities to study data quality issues. One approach is audit trails, a kind of paradata: event log data showing when and how respondents complete a questionnaire. Audit trails are a rich
source of data, and can be used to derive various indicators of questionnaire completion, e.g.:
• Completion indicators: completion time, numbers of sessions
• Navigation behaviour: the use of function keys (Forward, Backward, Print);
• Profiles of questionnaire completion;
• Completion course: When do respondents work on the questionnaire?
These indicators can be used to improve the questionnaire and the survey communication strategy, by tailoring these to the completion process of the respondent. Research showing the utility of audit trails will be presented, using the Dutch Annual
Structural Business Survey as example. 
Next to audit trails, eye-tracking (as used by e.g. Destatis in Germany) is a new method to study the completion process. Examples of the use of eye-tracking, based on experiences in Germany, will be discussed. Used in combination with other qualitative
and quantitative methods (pre-testing, debriefing, response and data-editing analysis), we have a good toolkit for evaluating and improving the survey design.