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?
Single, never married
Living together, not married
Married
Divorced
Separated
Widowed
Prefer not to answer
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.
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?
Single, never married
Living together, not married
Married
Divorced
Separated
Widowed
Prefer not to answer
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.
I agree. I erred on the side of industry standard, but I endorse your change.
However, that now seems like it’s asking too many questions in one, since the cohabitation question is irrelevant to whether one is divorced etc.