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I just did a survey about the documenatation in my own company.
Interesting results. What we found was that most people don't use
documentation all that much. I know, huge surprise. What I wasn't
prepared for was the negative reactions that brought out from some of
my coworkers. There are honestly some people who expect your "user
readership" rates for documentation to be in the 80% or higher range.
That's really not all that realistic for many types of technical
writing.
It helped my coworkers some to understand that good results aren't
typically that high. It also helped to show that while readership
isn't 100%, overall satisfaction from those who _did_ use the
documentation was high. Basically, you can't force your users to read
your docs, but you can make your docs pretty darn good for your users.
Make sure your poll reflects that.
I would also be very careful to include a "what can I do better"
section. It shows that you are genuinely interested in doing your best
instead of just doing your job.
All in all, the survey ended up being an excellent experience in
knowing how best to move forward with the technical writing here.
As for incentives, we offered an iPod Shuffle and got excellent
responses. We used Zoomerang to power the survey.
Good luck,
Dave
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