[WikiEN-l] Worst. Survey. Ever.

[Steve Summit]

Anybody know where on-wiki the current survey is being discussed?
I've got a thing or two to say.  (Message I just sent to
info at wikipediastudy.org appended.)

			*	*	*

From: Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:16:41 -0400
To: info at wikipediastudy.org
Subject: your survey has problems

I just completed the survey at http://survey47.wikipediastudy.org/
survey.php.  I'm sorry to be harsh and blunt.  It's terrible.
You can't use my results accurately -- they're wrong.
I doubt you can use anyone's results accurately.

This survey could only be completed accurately by someone:
* with nothing to do / too much time on their hands
* who never makes mistakes
* who can anticipate future questions before they're asked
* who can be bothered to search for his country and language
  (several times) in strictly-alphabetical lists of every single
  country and language in the world
* who knows the 2-character ISO code for the languages he knows,
  even when they're not obvious (e.g. DE for German)
* who knows the 3-character ISO code for the currency he uses

The survey told me I couldn't use my browser's Back and Forward
buttons, but had to use its own.  That's rude.

The survey then failed to provide Back buttons on all pages.
That's incompetent.

The survey then asked me questions like "How many hours do
you spend contributing to Wikipedia, per week?", followed by
"How many hours to you spend administering Wikipedia?", followed by
"How many hours do you spend supporting Wikipedia in technical ways?"
And that ended up being profoundly insulting.  Here's why.

The administrative and technical work I do on Wikipedia feels
like "contributions" to me, so (not knowing the next questions
were coming up) I included those hours in my first answer.
And the technical work I do feels like "administration", so
(not knowing the next question was coming up) I included that
in my second answer.  Therefore, if (as I suspect) you're
assuming those three categories are disjoint, and since my major
contributions lately have all been technical, I've inadvertently
overstated my overall contributions in this survey by a factor
of three.

And those particular survey pages were among those without
Back buttons, so I couldn't fix my mistake.  Do you know how
incredibly frustrating that is, to have wanted to spend time
contributing to a survey, to know I've contributed false
information, and to not be able to fix it?

Also, the survey took *way* too long.  And there was no
information given up-front about how long it might take.
The progress bar in the upper right-hand corner was a clue
and a nice touch, but it came too late.

The survey also took too long in relationship to the impression
of the data likely to be gleaned from it.  Short, tightly-focused
surveys give the surveyee the impression that some well-thought-out,
concise questions are being addressed by the surveyer.  Long,
scattershot surveys give the impression that the surveyers aren't
quite sure what they're looking for, are trying to ask everything
they can think of, and are imagining that they'll mine the data
later for interesting results later.  But, with poorly-defined
surveys, that task often ends up being difficult or impossible.
So I'm left begrudging the time I spent filling out the survey,
because it feels like the ratio of time investment (by me) to
useful information which can be gleaned (by you) is not good.

The survey asked me to specify things like "approximate number of
articles edited" and "percentage of time spent translating" using
drop-down selection boxes -- and with an increment of 1 between
the available choices!  That's just silly.  (I dreaded how long I
was going to have to scroll down to find my article edit count --
1196 -- and was both relieved and annoyed to discover that, after
500 entries, the drop-down list ended with "more than 500".)

The survey's categories were too-bluntly taken from existing
lists.  For example, the list I had to choose my employment from
was apparently taken from one of those dreadful Department of
Commerce categorizations, that I have just as much trouble
finding my job in when I fill out my tax forms.

At the very end, the survey asked if I wanted to submit my
results, or fix any mistakes.  But the provided way to fix
mistakes was to use the Back button -- perhaps several dozen
times -- which I wouldn't have felt like doing even if the chain
of Back buttons were complete.

The survey was clearly designed by someone who was thinking about
the data they wanted to collect, and in a scattershot way.  The
survey was clearly not designed with the person completing it in
mind.  The survey was clearly not designed or vetted by anyone
who knew anything about designing good surveys.

I probably had more complaints to list, but I shouldn't waste as
much time on this letter as I already wasted taking the survey,
so I'll stop here.

Bottom line: Please use the results of this survey with extreme
care, if at all.  The results are going to be heavily, heavily
biased by the inadvertent selection criteria involved in the
survey's hostility towards its participants.  If you conduct a
survey like this again, please find someone to assist in the
process who knows something about real-world survey work.