The first draft of the 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey is complete (see 2011 here). I will link it below if you promise not to try to take the survey because it's not done yet and this is just an example!
2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey Draft
I want three things from you.
First, please critique this draft. Tell me if any questions are unclear, misleading, offensive, confusing, or stupid. Tell me if the survey is so unbearably long that you would never possibly take it. Tell me if anything needs to be rephrased.
Second, I am willing to include any question you want in the Super Extra Bonus Questions section, as long as it is not offensive, super-long-and-involved, or really dumb. Please post any questions you want there. Please be specific - not "Ask something about abortion" but give the exact question you want me to ask as well as all answer choices.
Try not to add more than five or so questions per person, unless you're sure yours are really interesting. Please also don't add any questions that aren't very easily sort-able by a computer program like SPSS unless you can commit to sorting the answers yourself.
Third, please suggest a decent, quick, and at least somewhat accurate Internet IQ test I can stick in a new section, Unreasonably Long Bonus Questions.
I will probably post the survey to Main and officially open it for responses sometime early next week.
The 'Relationship Status' question would usually have more options, if only for sensitivity reasons. Here's a standard one:
What is your current marital status?
Even though you're not forcing responses on these, having a 'Prefer not to answer' is useful for two main reasons. First, it distinguishes between skipping a question on purpose and accidentally. Second, you can't de-select a radio button, so it's useful to have if you accidentally click a different option.
The 'cohabitation' option is pretty new - it's become very popular in the US and apparently seems worth tracking. A lot of people who are cohabitating are uncomfortable answering 'single' or 'married', and will often choose pretty inconsistently between the two. Similarly, widowed people might not want to answer 'single'. It should be easy to group them on the back end if you don't care about the distinction.
If you're going with the "married, divorced..." etc. set of choices, I don't think "single" should be in there - rather it should be just "never married". Otherwise people who are in a relationship but not married or cohabiting will be unable to answer anything.