  This paper studies questionnaire design as a formal decision problem,
focusing on one element of the design process: skip sequencing. We propose that
a survey planner use an explicit loss function to quantify the trade-off
between cost and informativeness of the survey and aim to make a design choice
that minimizes loss. We pose a choice between three options: ask all
respondents about an item of interest, use skip sequencing, thereby asking the
item only of respondents who give a certain answer to an opening question, or
do not ask the item at all. The first option is most informative but also most
costly. The use of skip sequencing reduces respondent burden and the cost of
interviewing, but may spread data quality problems across survey items, thereby
reducing informativeness. The last option has no cost but is completely
uninformative about the item of interest. We show how the planner may choose
among these three options in the presence of two inferential problems, item
nonresponse and response error.
