03 March 2008

Dear everyone who might ever write a survey,

Consider this example question from a survey:
"You always stick to the plan."
Do you strongly agree agree slightly agree slightly disagree disagree or strongly disagree?
This irks me so very much. How can you build a severity into the statement and then ask me to assign a severity to my agreement? What does it mean to slightly agree that I always stick to the plan? Stop thinking or else you'll have an aneurysm (1'53" mark).

I've groaned out loud numerous times when taking surveys that have these on them. This sort of question, unfortunately, is not a rarity.

So if you ever write a survey, please confine adjectives of severity to the answers; leave them out of the questions. Please. For me. For rationality.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can't deal with my infinite nature, can you.

Anonymous said...

You forgot "Neither agree nor disagree"

That's my favorite.

Aaron 'The Batman' Schwartz said...

I slightly agree with your post being most-excellently good.