{"id":5497,"date":"2013-03-13T15:24:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T04:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=5497"},"modified":"2025-08-25T20:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T10:08:16","slug":"poor-surveys-are-time-wasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2013\/03\/poor-surveys-are-time-wasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor surveys are time wasters…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m busy, you’re busy<\/a> and I suspect even people (including Government employees) writing surveys are busy.<\/p>\n

So why do people put up silly surveys and waste everyone’s time?<\/p>\n

\"clock<\/a>

Throwing time away…<\/p><\/div>\n

Late last week I was asked to fill in a Government-run survey\u00a0gathering information to help small businesses – a worthy cause so I completed the survey.<\/p>\n

But some of the questions were a waste of time – not only were they hard to answer, I doubt they will give meaningful results so it has wasted everyone’s time.<\/p>\n

Poor survey question samples<\/h2>\n

Here are some of the worst questions I answered, with my comments to explain why I didn’t like these particular questions.<\/p>\n

Q1 – is your website interactive? Can you edit it yourself (eg online forms, content)?
\nA1 – yes or no<\/p>\n

What is the correct answer if my site is interactive\u00a0but I can’t edit it, or if I can edit it but it isn’t interactive?<\/p>\n

Q2 do you use a still or video camera for work purposes?
\nA2 – Yes – what do you use it for?<\/p>\n

Um, for taking photos or videos? I wonder how many people gave that answer! I decided to be nice to them and answered ‘take photos for use in my blog’. Or did they want to know if I use photos of videos?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Q3. who is your local IT service company in a, b and c?<\/p>\n

Personally I had no idea! And what did they mean by local anyway – same suburb, same city, same state?
\nThe question perhaps makes more sense if you assume they want to know who I used for those services or maybe they were trying to ask ‘do you use a local IT service company for a, b or c’.<\/p>\n

Q4. how do you get business advice and information?
\nA4 – rate each option in the following list {which includes trade magazines, state gov department website, dept of broadband, communication & digital economy<\/a>}<\/p>\n

The list did not include professional advice (accountant, coach, etc), online articles\/blogs or government business info sites which were the first three things\u00a0I thought of! Yet it included such specific things as a government department site and the dept of broadband, etc which I have never heard of!
\nWhen giving answers, it is important to review the list\u00a0to ensure it covers enough breadth<\/a> – or change the question to indicate it is a narrow aspect being researched.<\/p>\n

Q5. do you or any of your staff telework? (work from home connecting remotely to the business network and database.)<\/p>\n

How do I answer that – I work from a home office so I am\u00a0nearly always\u00a0connecting to the business\u00a0from home but I don’t think it is really telework when the network is also at home!
\nDo\u00a0they want me to include sub-contractors\/suppliers as staff or keep ‘staff’ to mean employees?<\/p>\n

Maybe this post will compensate for the wasted time as at least we can all learn what not to do in our next survey or feedback form!<\/p>\n

My strong recommendation is to always get an outside person to read a survey when you think it is finished because they will spot errors in logic, assumptions and inconsistencies better than you can.<\/p>\n

What are your survey stories?<\/strong> Have you found they are harder to write than they appear? Or maybe you’ve come across some time-wasting questions like these ones. I’d love to hear them – although it would be nice to think most surveys are well done!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A survey is only as good as its questions – we can use poor survey questions to learn about effective surveys!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,1425],"tags":[1435,238,143,226,132],"class_list":["post-5497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-writing-examples","category-business-communications","tag-poor","tag-questions","tag-survey","tag-tips","tag-waste"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t