QSL: A specification language for e-questionnaire systems

Questionnaire is a general and indispensable method used frequently and widely in many academic, engineering, medical, commercial and political survey research activities to collect information about opinion or behavior of some groups of people. Today, many questionnaires are performed on the Internet by some ways of web applications. However, until now, there is no questionnaire specification language that can be used to specify various e-questionnaire systems. This paper proposes the first specification language named “QSL” for various e-questionnaire systems. QSL can be used to specify not only various questionnaires but also various e-questionnaire systems. The paper presents an analysis of the primitive elements of questionnaires and e-questionnaire systems, defines the specification language QSL, and discusses its completeness and effectiveness.