Re: Seeking Online Help Surveys Advice

["Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

People using online help want a solution to an immediate problem. They do  
NOT want, when looking for the help, to be presented with anything about a  
survey. I normally send those surveys to my own version of /dev/null  
(formerly the circular file).

The people who answer the surveys have already self-selected themselves to  
be the ones who don't need crucial answers NOW.

Additionally, most surveys are badly constructed, and have at least one of  
these faults:
- Ask for rating on a scale of 1 to 10 (or 0 to 9) instead of "bad - don't  
care - good".
- Present the perpetrator of the survey with numeric results that are  
really without meaning.
- Annoy people with mandatory selections.
- Annoy people with selections like "needs improvement - okay - great"  
when "horrid" should have been one of the choices.
- Fail to collect lengthy, written responses.
- Fail to collect a critique of the survey itself.
- Seem to pretend a preservation of anonymity.
- Indicate in flashing neon that the questions were never tested on a  
naive audience.

There are plenty of other faults. Those are just some.

Try to make sure your survey is harmless, or at least mostly harmless.


On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 15:37:16 -0500, David Renn <daverenn08 -at- gmail -dot- com>  
wrote: