Kieran Lal wrote:
The list of 'most common' and 'least common' should be the same list. This question is leading and makes assumptions. Items in the least common list may turn out to be common or items in the common list may turn out to be uncommon.
While that makes logical sense that least common and most common lists are mirrored lists, we got these responses from user interviews. So I am sure there is someone with a dissertation in statistics or audience research under there belt who can weigh in on whether it's better to use actual responses versus logically consistent responses.
This is a good opportunity to see if your interview results are consistent with results from a broader audience. The only way to do that is to allow users to choose on their own what is common/uncommon - not choose from a list of identified common/uncommon tasks. I have a particular interest since as you know with our usability report we had a very different list of common tasks performed by our stakeholders. So I am curious whether our stakeholder's common tasks are specific to them or a broader range of users.
When administering your site rate the ease with which you accomplish the following:
Consider a 4 or 6 level scale to help avoid wishy washy responses (challenge people to decide if they really think its easy or hard - no middle answer): 6)very easy, 5)easy, 4)somewhat easy, 3)somewhat difficult, 2)difficult, 1)very difficult.
Ok. I'll check with a couple people about the downside of neutral responses.
It all depends on what you are trying to measure. I think we are looking for items that either make the grade or don't and therefore need improvement. (Does a question that has a majority of people choosing the middle ground mean that resources should be directed at the feature or not?) Regardless if you choose this scale or not - i forgot to include a 'don't know' - for people that have never used a feature.
It gives the survey taker an opportunity to let us know what they consider important. For example, in the survey results last time we learned that internationalization, and mail management were important but didn't really get much consideration in the previous categories. In the live interviews, I find that the most interesting information comes when you ask people what is important to them. You can review the last question of the survey responses to see for yourself. http://groups.drupal.org/usability
Gotcha. Its for future research. In that case i would expect to see some questions about i18n and mail management in this survey. andre