Description
The Environment and Wellbeing questionnaires were delivered as part of the web battery at age 16. Because of the length of the questionnaires, they were divided into four distinct parts (A, B, C and D), which were presented as four separate web activities alongside the various cognitive web tests. See the 16 Year web tests page for information about the order of presentation of the twin activities.
Each of the four activities was divided into a series of "screens" for presentation on the web. The first screen comprised a very brief introduction, and subsequent screens contained sets of questions. Generally, a separate screen was used for each measure in the activity; in most cases, all the questions on a given screen had the same response options and could be presented in a tabular format using radio buttons. Having answered the questions on a given screen, twins were required to click on a "continue" button in order to proceed to the next screen.
On most screens, there was a validation rule requiring twins to answer a minimum number of the questions on that screen. As a general rule, twins were allowed to leave a few questions unanswered on each screen. If insufficient questions were answered, a pop-up reminder message would appear on clicking the "continue" button, and the twin would not be allowed to proceed.
On some screens, particularly where the questions were of a more personal nature, a tick box was placed at the bottom of the screen allowing the twins to proceed without answering any questions. For full details of the questions, response options, screens and validation rules, see the questionnaires below.
Because these four activities were questionnaires rather than tests, some of the usual rules for delivering web activities were relaxed. During a given session, twins could use their browsers' Refresh button without any effect, and could use the Back button to return to the previous page where they could change and re-submit their answers (however, on completing the activity twins could not re-start it).
There was no time limit for responding to each screen of questions, so item timeouts did not occur. Furthermore, no time information was recorded other than the start and end dates and times for the activity as a whole.
A "come back later" button was presented on every screen. Screens, and the questions on each screen, were always presented in the same order without any branching or discontinue rules (except in part D, where there was a branch for male and female respondents).
The Questionnaires
The pdf documents linked below show the detailed content of each questionnaire activity, how it was divided into screens, the validation rules that applied to each screen, and other information relevant to data collection:
Item Variables
The item variables relating to the four questionnaire activities, as listed in the table below, were generated automatically by programs on the web server during the course of the test. Note that the dataset only includes data for completed activities. If a twin started the activity (questionnaire part A, B, C or D) but left it unfinished, then the data for the activity were not used.
In most cases the values of these variables have been left unaltered, although some have been recoded during data cleaning as follows. See the web data cleaning page for further details.
- For twins identified as random responders (in part A, B, C or D), the status flag is recoded from 2 to 4, the data flag is recoded from 1 to 0, and all item variables are recoded to missing (questionnaire data deleted)
The start and end dates and times have not been retained in the dataset.
| Variables | Explanation | Values |
|---|---|---|
| pcqXstat1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Status flag: outcome of activity | 0=not started, 1=started but not finished, 2=successfully completed, 4=random responses |
| pcqXdata1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Data flag: is questionnaire data present? | 0=no, 1=yes |
| pcqXquan1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Number of questions answered in the activity | integer values up to 62 for part A, 80 for part B, 47 for part C, or 74 for part D |
| pcqXstdt1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Start date of the activity [not in dataset] | Date values |
| pcqXsttm1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Start time of the activity [not in dataset] | Time values |
| pcqXendt1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
End date of the activity [not in dataset] | Date values |
| pcqXentm1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
End time of the activity [not in dataset] | Time values |
| pcqXsess1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D) |
Number of sessions (at the computer) used by the twin to complete the activity. | Integer values of 1 or above |
| pcqXYYYYZZ1/2 (X is the questionnaire part: A, B, C or D; YYYY is a string of four or five letters denoting the measure; ZZ is the item number within the measure) |
Response in item ZZ of measure YYYY within questionnaire part X | Integer values - coding varies between different measures |
| Variable names and response value codes for all
questions are shown in these annotated versions of the questionnaires: part A, part B, part C, part D (pdfs) |
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