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The paper describes a new software system for the documentation of the development process of the questionnaire. Furthermore, it allows searching for formal and structural aspects of questions in social science data archives.

During the development of a questionnaire dozens of versions of the instruments are generated and subsequently discarded. Usually, only the final version of the questionnaire is documented. Due to this policy, details of previous versions and the rationale behind the final details in phrasing and layout is lost. The knowledge generated during the revisions can not be used for improving future research.

We developed QDDS III as a freely available Java-program. The system allows the electronic documentation of the development of Paper&Pencil, CATI and CAPI questionnaires. The program conforms to the DDI-standard of data archives.

Finally, QDDS III allows the search and retrieval of questionnaires and survey meta-data for large survey data archives. Currently about 50 widely used surveys are documented within QDDS III. The program is unique in its ability for searching according to formal characteristics of questions. For example, a data archive repository containing hundreds of surveys can be used to find all those surveys, in which a battery of dichotomous questions is followed by an open question. Such queries are useful for the methodological inspired re-analysis of survey data.