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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on October 13, 2006
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwj348
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American Journal of Epidemiology Copyright © 2006 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health All rights reserved; printed in U.S.A.
Received August 8, 2006
Accepted September 6, 2006

INVITED COMMENTARY

Invited Commentary: The Art of Making Questionnaires Better

Tony Rosen 1 and Jørn Olsen 1 *

1 From the Department of Epidemiology, University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Jørn Olsen, E-mail: jo{at}ucla.edu


  Abstract

A paper by Schilling et al. ("Inaccessible Novel Questionnaires in Published Medical Research: Hidden Methods, Hidden Costs." Am J Epidemiol 2007:165:000-00) addresses a crucial issue for epidemiologists: limited peer access to questionnaires. This limited access hampers the ability to evaluate and improve the questions used by investigators and, in turn, the quality of some of the self-reported data. The authors of this commentary analyzed recent publications in core epidemiology journals, finding that self-reported data were used in 64% of articles, but key questions were seldom printed in the article (9%), and open access to complete questionnaires (16%) was rarely provided. Only 47% of articles even discussed validation; of these, only 67% actually validated questions used in the study. The authors join Schilling et al. in making recommendations to improve questionnaire access and collaboration. A first step, proposed before, involves investigators posting their questionnaires on a website concurrently with publication of their article. Journal editors should require online access to full questionnaires for published articles and inclusion of key questions within the article when possible. Funding agencies should take the lead in increasing access and collaboration by developing a searchable database.

Keywords: data collection; epidemiologic methods; questionnaires; research design.
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