The Census (Wales) Regulations 2020

PART 8 Functions and Features of Online Questionnaires

1.  Online questionnaires and the Authority website hosting online questionnaires will contain information relating to the census and to the completion and submission of online questionnaires, including information about—

(a) starting an online questionnaire,

(b) the persons who must complete the census,

(c) members of the household answering the parts of a questionnaire relevant to them,

(d) when the census should be completed,

(e) how the Authority will use and protect information relating to a prescribed person,

(f) where and how help to complete an online questionnaire can be found, and

(g) the mandatory nature of the census as a whole, but the voluntary nature of certain questions within the census.

2.  Online questionnaires and the Authority website hosting online questionnaires will contain functions and features to enable—

(a) a prescribed person to access the relevant online questionnaire by entering a unique access code online,

(b) a unique access code to link automatically to an address of a household or a communal establishment,

(c) the address of a prescribed person to be displayed automatically where relevant in different parts of an online questionnaire,

(d) where an online questionnaire is being completed by a person on behalf of another person in accordance with these Regulations, the automatic modification of any words, letters or punctuation necessary to ensure the grammatical sense of instructions or questions, including the automatic replacement of the words ‘you’ and ‘your’ in any question with the name of the person on whose behalf the online questionnaire is being completed,

(e) the use of responses regarding the relationship of one person to other persons in a household of five or more persons to infer the relationship of those other persons to each other, including for this purpose the function to ask the intermediate question “Are any of these people related to you?” or third-person variations of that question,

(f) the display of text containing instructions or information relating to the completion of specific questions, or generally to the completion of the online questionnaire,

(g) information to be displayed as to why a particular question is important,

(h) questions to be answered in different sequences,

(i) a range of pre-determined response options to be offered in relation to a question,

(j) typed responses to be assisted by predictive text (where appropriate),

(k) routing through the online questionnaire by the use of routing questions,

(l) indication to be given that a routing question has not been answered,

(m) the requirement that a routing question be answered before further questions may be answered,

(n) the prevention of mutually incompatible answers being selected in response to a question,

(o) the display of a prompt where appropriate to encourage the review of a response,

(p) the amendment of a response before submission, and

(q) a partially completed online questionnaire to be saved and continued later.