Received: 16 November 2021 Accepted: 24 November 2021 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8500.12531 RESEARCH AND EVALUATION What is in a form? Examining the complexity of application forms and administrative burden Jeremiah Thomas Brown Gemma Carey Eleanor Malbon Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Correspondence Jeremiah Thomas Brown, Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales, 704, Level 7 Science Engineering Building, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia. Email: Jeremiah_thomas.brown@unsw.edu.au Abstract Analysis of the welfare state emphasises that access to social security support is a key component of the rela- tionship between the state and the citizen. Recent lit- erature has identified administrative burden as a con- cept that helps us to understand an emerging dynamic between the state and the citizen, where citizens must deal with increasingly onerous administrative ‘costs’ in order to access services or support from the state. Increased administrative burden has been identified at many stages of access to social security support and gov- ernment services. Burdens are often talked about in gen- eral terms, that is, the amount of administrative com- plexity associated with a particular welfare service. In this paper, we look at how administrative burden can be found in even the smallest unit of administration— application forms. Taking a form from the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), we con- tribute to the growing literature on application forms and administrative burden by developing a framework to assess the complexity of questions on an application form. We show that in areas where citizens lives are com- plex, questions on forms can constrain the capacity of citizens to accurately represent their circumstances and, in turn, constrain their ability to gain access to support. Aust J Publ Admin. 2022;1–32. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aupa © 2021 Institute of Public Administration Australia 1