[Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

[Robert Rohde]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/10/26 Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org>:
>> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 3:27 PM, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Criticism: not exact. What is "regularly"? Once a day? Once a week? Once a
>>> month? 5% of all wiki edits? 25% of all wikiedits?
>>
>> Sometimes it's good to keep it vague -- to get people's opinions on
>> their own activity.  Isn't the survey trying to gauge
>> Commons participation and any barriers to it?  If people feel they
>> contribute very frequently to Commons, their participation isn't
>> really hindered that much.
>
> I disagree. If you want opinions you have to ask for opinions. Asking
> vague questions just annoys people because they don't know what they
> are supposed to answer.

There is more to it that that.

If you want to measure people's perceptions, you use qualitative
judgment terms, e.g. "often", "regularly", "rarely".

If you want to measure concrete facts, you use quantified terms, e.g.
"once per week", "more than 5 times per day", etc.

The latter gives direct information about participation, while the
former gives a convolution of participation data with information
about how people perceive their own participation.  Either approach
can be useful, but which one is used should be determined by a clear
understanding of what it is the survey hopes to accomplish.

-Robert Rohde