ER modeling of semantic structure for survey design

A vital portion of conceptual analysis is the identification and definition of the semantic structure of a domain. The paper discusses semantic structure, contrasting it with semantic content, and describes the role of both in formal descriptions of domain concepts. The entity-relationship (ER) model offers the scope and expressive capacity appropriate for representing semantic structure (but is inadequate for modeling semantic content). Use of the ER technique for analysis of semantic structure in survey design is presented. The ER diagram for a survey explicitly depicts how a population is defined, and how data are obtained. The paper closes with a discussion of the contribution of the ER model to the design and documentation of a survey