[Sigia-l] user survey questionnaire

[frolix3000-sigia at yahoo.com]

Patrick -

Don't spend too much time trying to prop up your
arguments with research results and so forth - that's
all good and well, but in reality that is taking the
stick approach rather than the carrot approach (what
motivates these users to answer your questions?  Why
should they spend the time on this?) You may only get
them to grudgingly accept open-ended survey questions
and you may still end up with people not responding.

Second, multiple choice questions are not necessarily
completely useless.  They can be valuable in
confirming or rejecting a design concept.

Third, you should consider asking them for a
compromise, such as "yes, I'd be willing to go with
mutiple choice, but in return I would like to do a few
phone interviews either as follow-ups to the survey to
validate and add detail to responses, or do the phone
interviews first and then use multiple choice
questions from a broader group to confirm or reject
the findings from the interviews."

-Anders



--- Patrick Grizzard <gamutant at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am redesigning an intranet for a client with
> offices in North America, Europe, Asia, South
> America, etc. We have scheduled time to conduct
> interviews with users in their NJ office, but in
> order to get a more representative sampling, we
> created a questionnaire to post on the current
> intranet. The response of some of the stakeholders
> is that they feel it will be too time consuming, and
> therefore senior-level employees and managers will
> not respond. Their suggestion was to make the survey
> responses multiple choice. I explained that in order
> for the responses to be useful, we need open-ended
> responses that do not foreclose any possibilities or
> lead the user in a particular direction. I know that
> this is a pretty standard assumption for us, but I
> am wondering if anyone could point me to specific
> research/papers that I can use to make my case. Any
> suggestions appreciated. Thanks,
> 
> :Patrick Grizzard
> Information Architect
> Ruder Finn Interactive
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