[Theforum] Re: questionnaire

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at compaq.com
Wed Oct 31 16:50:01 CST 2001


A few ideas:

* Yep - You can leave the response open as long as you want (a month or
two might be good), and pull off the data at regular intervals (like
weeks) for preview/analysis/incremental additions.

* I'm not seeing any reason not to have anonymity.  The one thing I'd
strongly suggest is --- not offering anonymity if you don't intend to
keep to it.  [There are few things [in survey research anyway] worse
than promising anonymity and breaking your word.  "But Ron, the
respondant said 'x is a $@$%@' ... and I think x has a right to know who
said that" .... Nup! - not if you promised anonymity to the respondant.]
{I've had to stand up to irate VPs and explain that I wasn't going to
give them the customer's name who said bad things about his department.
It didn't make me more popular - but it was "right", dammit.</ thump
fist>}

* What? No check boxes? Awwwwww!   ;-)

* Demographics isn't always for selling.  Sometimes it's helpful to know
that one particular group thinks more/less highly or your group or
offering than another.  Might I suggest a *different* kind of
demographic?  How about instead of collecting standard stuff like
age/race/income -- we, instead, ask 'designer or coder?', 'front-end or
back-end?', 'IIS or Apache?', 'years experience with 'doing' web pages?'
... these might be the kinds of demographics that might lend some
understanding to issues like - all newbies like us, all seasoned-pros
think we should do more 'z', CF heads never read the articles, etc....

* On the sample question: would you want to know which 'other site', or
'other mailing list'?

BTW - what's the "goal" of the study?  [I can punt around some ideas in
my head driving to and from work if I have a clearer idea what we want
to know.]

User Satisfaction? (Might want some questions on 'Do you feel your
questions get answered promptly? - Yes, Nup, DK'  'Do you feel your
questions get answered correctly/adequately?' ... etc.)

Resources? (What topics could use more articles?  Are the archives easy
to use?  Do the browser archives meet your needs?  Have you tried the
tip search?)

Directional?  (Should evolt become an NFP?  ect.)

{BTW - while you *can* do more than one ... one is usually "primary" and
the rest aren't covered nearly as well. ... 'though they can be used as
a lead in for future research.}


RonL.


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel J. Cody [mailto:djc at members.evolt.org]
Subject: Re: [Theforum] Re: questionnaire 

> -should we try and gather some demographic type info?
don't know what we'd use that for..  ??  also, and this is just me, but
when surveys start asking demographic questions, i dont finish it cus
that
usually means they're looking to sell the info off..

just some thoughts. now we need to start hammering down some questions.

1.) How did you first hear about evolt.org?
	a.) Word of mouth
	b.) a mailing list/bulliten board
	c.) banner ads(we have them on that firmlist site
remember)/graphics
	d.) link from another site
	e.) other:
		____________________

??




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