Comment:

Think we have made things greatly more complicated by not creating master files for obserations before we started down this path.

Believe the master files for a group of questions /variables (un answered) would have been persuasively parallel to a questionairre, and then the completed questionaire would look a lot like an observation group.

Might have to flag things as transient or temporary for those kinds of questions that have no persistence.

But think we losts an oportunity.