The Makings of a Monstrous Survey
Since it's almost Halloween, I thought I'd post something scary. Sort of. In my line of work, I see some scary stuff..meaning scarily misdesigned. Okay, perhaps as scary as the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man from Ghostbuster (was anyone really ever afraid of him???!), meaning not very scary at all. These surveys fall into the "wow, what were they thinking?" kind of scary.
1. The Thing That Wiggled And Squirmed Survey.
In years past, I had the misfortune to assist a non-profit group who created a monstrous 356 question survey (my screams went unheard) that they wanted to make web-based. This was the beast with 356 legs. It wiggled, squirmed AND all of its questions were required! This survey tortured its victims for an hour and 35 minutes long before they could submit it (or it ate them..not sure). Last I heard, this group disbanded their survey because of low response rate. I suspect that many people tried to take this survey and eventually saw that struggle was futile and just gave up. Then the survey ate them. Keep this beast under control by limiting your number of questions to 20 and under!
2. The Chinese Question Torture Survey. It's the constant drip that eventually drives you insane. Some surveys can be the same way. Take something small and repeat it enough that it drives you to madness. I took a survey from a well-known marketing software company just the other day that had me begging to make it stop. This was perhaps one of the worst usages of skip logic that I've ever see. I would answer a question such as "what is your favorite color?" I would choose "blue" and then the next screen (drip), would say "so your favorite color is 'blue'" (drip), so how would you rate your preference for "blue" (drip), submit and the next screen (or do I mean "scream"?) says "so you said that your favorite color is blue (drip)..how does blue rank on a scale of one to ten compared to red, green, and orange?" (drip drip drip). To avoid this horror, keep your questions short, pin-pointed and remember that if you waste your survey participants' time, they may NOT come back for your next as a vengeance!
3. The Exorcist Survey. This kind of survey is surely possessed. When a survey starts out with the following question:
Please rate our excellent service:
Excellent, Great, Good, Not Good
you can sense an unseen hand guiding to the survey participant to act, to answer in a way that makes you wonder--hum, he doesn't seem like himself today! Okay, probably not the work of Satan but more likely just skewed, biased responses but in my world, that's darn SCARY!! Keep your questions neutral and your data will stay away from the dark side..
Speaking of scary movies, I saw "The Devil's Backbone" by Guillermo del Toro. I can't handle scary movies but this one was perfect to give me a chill while not making me think something was hiding under the bed last night. So fire up your DVD player after the kids go to bed (yours or the ones who egged your house), put on a good scary movie, have some warm cider, and keep the dog nearby..happy haunting!!
