Excel Form Standards Update - Multi-unit (Horizontal) Forms
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has been using the Microsoft product Excel to design self-administered business forms for many years and standards for the design of these forms were released in 2002. The standard forms were designed to look very similar to their standard paper form equivalents with a few exceptions relating to the electronic mode, for example using Arial font rather than Times.
Recently an audit of electronic forms used for business survey respondents was conducted to understand the current situation in order to manage the growth and nature of e-reporting to the ABS in the future. A key finding from the audit was that there were some quite extreme departures from ABS Excel form standards to meet the requirements of the surveys and reduce the burden of the respondent.
Form design standards have therefore been developed for a new type of form, which was named a 'Multi-unit (horizontal) Excel' form. The existing form type was named a 'Conventional (vertical) Excel' form. Multi-unit Excel forms have a spreadsheet-like layout. These forms have particular application to surveys that require multiple responses, that is, for different business units, on the same form.
Each row in the spreadsheet potentially contains the response for an individual business unit. The forms are also sometimes used where the respondent wants to report on a by unit basis, and the ABS is interested in the aggregate. Typically, each survey question is in a column heading and each row represents a responding unit or a repeated data item broken down in some way e.g. information from different states in Australia, or different departments in a university.
Generally the Excel standards, for example the use of colour, lines, font, headings and labelling still apply for Multi-unit forms. These forms are also still required to have all the standard components, i.e. Front, General instructions and How to submit pages.
The major difference between the form types is the layout, with Conventional forms having a vertical layout, i.e. questions being listed down the page in the same arrangement as the paper form equivalent, and the Multi-unit having a horizontal layout with questions listed in each column across the spreadsheet. Other variations include allowing smaller font sizes for the Mutli-unit forms to allow more space for the question text, and in some circumstances paraphrasing of questions due to space restrictions. Where any notes or questions are summarised, a separate pdf of the form and instructions should also be provided to the respondent.
Multi-unit Excel forms will allow the ABS to be more flexible when designing electronic forms, and can greatly reduce the time and effort required for respondents to provide their data.
For more information, please contact Leone Wardman on (02) 6252 7883.
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