A Survey Process Quality Perspective on Documentation

This chapter discusses the documentation of multinational, multilingual, and multi‐regional (3M) surveys from a survey process quality perspective. It relates documentation to a survey quality framework and the “total survey error” (TSE) paradigm; and introduces the notion of structured systems of data documentation, focusing on the data documentation initiative. The chapter provides examples of documentation in multinational surveys. It describes an existing tool to record information about the survey life‐cycle process and its outputs, and then outlines a survey metadata documentation framework which supplies definitions to be used in future versions of this tool, also for comparative surveys. The goals of such documentation are threefold: (1) to provide timely, quality‐relevant information on the ongoing survey; (2) to provide data users with essential information; and (3) to provide information relevant to improving the quality of future surveys.