this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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You folks are really exaggerating. How is this survey weird? The random questions in groups of 3 make it easy to compare 3 features instead of rating 60 different features by most wanted to least wanted. In aggregate from thousands of replies, they can sort all answers.
I feel like most of these people were way over analyzing the questions. No reason to look for in depth meaning of possible answers, just answer them and take them at face value.
It's the "most wanted" language. I don't blame common folks associating "most wanted" with "I want this!" when in fact they don't mean it.
But the language is clear. From these 3 features, choose the one you want the most and the one you want the least 🤔
The language is not clear.
" As a vegetarian, which of these three options you want the least and which you want the most? You MUST choose to continue:
"
You are saying that a reasonable person (vegetarian in this case, and disclaimer: I am not vegetarian) would say "well, I want a kick in the balls the least, so I'll choose that. Now, fuck, I HATE chicken sandwiches and I HATE pork sandwiches. They both make me puke. But if I have to choose, I guess I'll go for the chicken sandwich. Hey pollster, I want the chicken sandwich the most." And the pollster writes "Chester wants the chicken sandwich the most." Yeah, very clear.
That's the typical "if you were in a deserted island" scenario that vegetarians and vegans are very familiar with. Given those 3 options:
1 > 2 > 3
You're missing the point, but that's fine. I'm in a good mood today, so I'll stop things here. Let's talk about something else.
How's your day going?
They could've just said "Rank the features from one to three accordibg to how much you like it". This seems unneccessarily more confusing. It isn't all that cobfusing, but it is an odd way to formulate the question.
That's already suggestive. What if you want none of them, and strongly so?
If you hate or love them all equally, I guess a random score is fine.
The person evaluating the poll will take away "person likes option 1 most" not "person absolutely wants none of these in their browser, ever". That's the issue. You should not phrase questions in a way that assumes parts of the answer, at least not if you want useful results.
A better way would have been to let us rate features 0 to 10 and just accept if people thought their feature ideas are all shit.
It's not a better way to rate from 0 to 10. It takes way more effort from the user and leads to more people dropping out. And in the end, the result is the same in aggregate. If your opinion is popular, more people will vote like you because the sets of 3 are random. In a survey of thousands, individual opinions don't matter. No one is going to evaluate the answers one by one.
Then make it 0 to 3 or 0 to 1 for all I care. You missed the point, which is: If I want or don't want feature A doesn't influence if I want or don't want feature B, and linking the two distorts the results of the poll.
Not if you include the human factor of the decision maker, who can twist "wanted less" into "still wanted a bit" as a justification if they want a certain feature for different reasons than user benefit (like, say, a "privacy friendly" but indeed not at all privacy friendly mechanism to give data to add networks). That doesn't fly with "0 points".