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Re: Help with a survey

Subject: Re: Help with a survey
From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 03:45:06 -0400

I have never seen a good "surveymonkey" survey. The facility seems to be merely a tool for tossing together bad surveys. Occasionally I start participating in a surveymonkey survey. I rarely finish. Once in a while, if the survey contains a section for submitting remarks on the survey itself, I will explain some of the defects in its design. I find many surveys to be downright insulting as they try to funnel me into predetermined categories. The results gathered from bad surveys are bad results, but I'm certain that they are put to use, perhaps for implementing or justifying bad policy.

Perhaps surveymonkey is not fully to blame. I think that nearly all surveys are bad. At the bottom of the heap (and it's not far from the top) are the ones that are trying to sell you something or get you to contribute to a political party.

On Mon, 16 May 2016 18:09:57 -0400, Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:

I agree. The survey is way too simplistic. There are many different "flavors" of technical writing, and this survey is useful in only a small handful of them. Most of my work is editing, and most of their questions are irrelevant to anything but producing customer-facing docs. If they tried setting up branching so they present different questions for different types of tech writing, they failed completely. And the fact there's no provision for free-form entries about the survey itself tells me they aren't really researching anything; they trying to farm statistics. They don't want feedback about their methodology. That's a bad sign.

On Sunday, May 15, 2016 4:00 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> wrote:

Bad survey. They don't seem to recognize that some tech writers spend
most of our time doing research.

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 1:16 PM, INKtopia Admin <admin -at- inktopia -dot- net> wrote:
Hi everyone,

Can you take a few minutes to take a survey from our partner, easyDITA?

The survey is designed to research major issues content creators and
managers are faced with on a daily basis. Deadline is early June or 200
respondents, whichever comes first.

Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VTC16

Thanks for your help!
Al
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References:
Help with a survey: From: INKtopia Admin
Re: Help with a survey: From: Robert Lauriston
Re: Help with a survey: From: Keith Hood

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