Sarah -- Blog entry about surveys

My main experience with online surveys are either the fun internet quizzes (such as "What Harry Potter character are you?"), or the occasional customer survey I consent to do. I even sometimes seek out the latter type if I've had a particularly good or particularly bad experience with a company, just to let my voice be heard in some way, although truth to tell, I never think it'll make much of a difference. It makes me feel better, though.

One of the things that most irritates me about surveys (excepting the ones for pure entertainment) is that the questions are either so exhaustive in an attempt to be as inclusive as possible or they don't have an answer I would like to use.

An example of the former problem is that of gender: I've actually seen questionnaires that list about ten different possibilities for identifying one's gender; male, female, transgendered (male-to-female), transgendered (female-to-male), transgendered (male-to-neutral), transgendered (female-to-neutral), intersexed (identifying male), intersexed (identifying female), intersexed (identifying neither or both), or "prefer not to answer." Surveys that attempt to incorporate every single possible answer are exhausting to read through.

On the other hand, surveys that don't offer enough choice are maddening in and of themselves. One survey I took frustrated me so much I simply quit taking it, and it was only asking for my marital status. Was I a) single, b) married, c) divorced, or d) on a second marriage? Considering I am not single, not married, not divorced, NOR am I on a second marriage, I had no idea how to answer, and thus quit the survey in a fit of pique.

There's a real balancing act to making a survey that is both complete (and thus useful to the data-gatherers) and easy to take without either boring or irritating your subjects. For those quizzes that are for entertainment purposes only, the "rules" can be fudged a bit. I don't mind being asked a question about something I would ordinarily consider inapplicable if I'm taking the "What Disney villain are you" quiz. If I'm taking a customer survey, however, I don't want to be too tightly pigeon-holed.