Survey Question Bank
Data collection zone - re-using survey questions, scales, instruments, classifications
The following guidelines are intended only as an indication of copyright ownership.
All questions and instruments are copyright protected with copyright residing with the organisation who commissioned, designed or conducted the survey. The SQB publishes and disseminates material owned by others but cannot grant permission for use of that material or be held responsible for having been the source from which others might have obtained that material.
In practice, many copyright holders hold the view that their questionnaires, by virtue of appearing on these pages, are in the public domain and available for re-use with appropriate acknowledgement. Nevertheless, since each copyright holder has ultimate responsibility for decisions about re-use of part or all of their questionnaire(s), our advice is to contact the copyright holder directly for permission to reproduce questionnaire text for any use. Almost always - in our experience - the copyright holder will grant that permission.
Some questionnaires contain measurement scales, batteries of questions or classifications to measure specific conditions, for example disability, cognitive ability and well-being. These instruments are copyright to the institution or company that produced them and must not be reproduced without permission. In many cases, the copyright for these instruments is printed on the relevant page of the questionnaire. If in doubt, please refer enquiries to the survey manager of the questionnaire you are using. If this proves difficult (perhaps due to the age of the survey), contact us.
For those interested in further reading, the UK Data Archive has produced a guide to copyright in the re-use of existing resources for data creators.
