Best practices for developing interviews

Interview files

Use one file until it becomes necessary to separate into multiple interview files.

Reasons to separate:

• Multiple authors working at same time
• Question set will be re-used in a different interview

Controlling question order

Use a mandatory code block at the top of the interview which lists the variables in the order that you want them to be gathered. No other questions should be made mandatory. Avoid using the need statement if at all possible (sometimes it seems its necessary to trigger seeking variables for sending an email).

ID tags

Each question in the interview file should have an id tag. Use id tags for mandatory code blocks as well. id can include spaces, should be descriptive. It will be used for tracking in Google Analytics as well as debugging.