[Sigia-l] user survey questionnaire

[Patrick Grizzard]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I should have mentioned that we initially requested to conduct telephone interviews with international users but were told that would be too difficult to organize. The questionnaire was intended as a back-up solution to provide us with at least _some_ feedback from the trenches in addition to the 'top-down' goals mandated by the various stakeholders. As far as the survey is concerned, I think we have struck a reasonable compromise between open-ended questions and more concise multiple choice queries with room for additional comments in text fields. But, I guess the big picture problem is a general intransigence on the client's part toward conducting user research. As Ziya suggested though, I think we might have better luck getting input once we are actually closer to launching. Since there is a bit of a time crunch, perhaps the solution is to go ahead with whatever feedback we can get now and then push a bit harder for access to users when we are ready with a prototype? Just thinking out loud. Thanks again for everyone's input.

:P


 
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Reiss <elr at e-reiss.com>
Sent: Mar 29, 2004 10:40 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] user survey questionnaire

Dear Patrick,

Keep in mind that all volunteer questionnaires are self-segmenting.
In other words, you only get results from people who like to take
surveys. This has a tendency to skew the results - quite a lot in
many cases.

Also, getting a questionnaire right is very tricky (if you insist,
check out Don A. Dillman's fat but practical book - "Mail and
Internet Surveys, the tailored design method").

As Jesse suggested, if you're new to this game, get someone with good
interviewing skills to call people up in person. Much better ROI. And
if you're doing this yourself, get a couple of clocks to tell you the
local time. This is particularly useful if you're dealng with
anything more than three timezones away (the mere fact that CET went
on summertime yesterday has screwed up my own "in-the-head"
calculation throughout the day).

Cheers,
Eric

Eric Reiss
Principal
e-reiss aps
copenhagen, denmark

www.e-reiss.com

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Patrick Grizzard
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