Surveys

Introduction

An expairiment has three parts:

1. Collect data (called a "Survey")
2. Clean the data (called "Check Data")
3. Analyze the data (called "Results")

All three parts work together to help you discover what your expairiment participants value and by how much. Let's look at the survey and how to use it.

What Is a Survey?

The method for collecting data is called a survey. The expairiment survey breaks down an array of ideas that participants cannot prioritize into simple pairs that they can judge easily. Why? Too many choices overload our brains. The more choice we have, the less effective we are at making a good selection and the less satisfied we are at the selection we make.

An expairiment survey takes advantage of this quirk in our brains by simplifying choice into a single pair of ideas. As the survey progresses, each idea is paired against the others. Having made the best choice for an idea possible, the survey asks the participant how much they value the idea they picked over the one they didn't. The two combined, across all ideas and all participants, gives us an accurate picture of what all participants really want.

An expairiment survey also helps uncover and evaluate hidden ideas. Surveys generally come in two types: closed-ended and open-ended. Participants answer questions in closed-ended surveys by choosing from sets of prepopulated answers. Open-ended surveys give participants a chance to answer in their own words. Closed-ended surveys are easy to process, but they can leave up to 60% of possible answers out of the results. Open-ended surveys can be a nightmare to process and are best used for qualitative studies.

An expairiment combines the best of both by soliciting suggestions from participants that are fed back into the survey. This gives you a qualitative understanding of qualitative data and helps you uncover and prioritize ideas you were not aware of.

Survey Parts

There are four parts to a survey:

1. Hello message
2. Segment questions
3. Challenges
4. Comment and Goodbye message

Here’s how each works:

Hello Message

The hello message consists of custom text and instructions for taking the survey. You can customize each survey with its own hello message. Participants are offered a tour of the survey or the option to dive right in.

Segment Questions

Participants answer up to three segment questions through dropdowns.

You may specify up to three segment questions (one is required). Segments let you parse results by the answers to these questions. For example, you can compare the priorities of men versus women.

Challenges

The Challenge page shows:

• the survey question
• two ideas from your active ideas list
• a skip button
• a suggestion box
• “I’m Done Voting” button

Tooltips with help text will appear on the first challenge page.

A participant may:

1. Choose one of the two ideas. After participants choose one of the two, they are then given three importance buttons to further qualify their choice. When an importance button is clicked, the response is saved and two new ideas appear for voting.
2. Skip these two ideas using the "I Can't Decide" button. Two new ideas appear for voting.
3. Enter an idea or comment in the suggestion box ("I Have a Suggestion" button). After submitting the suggestion, two new ideas appear for voting. An email is sent to the survey owner asking them to review the suggestion. Suggestions become available to the Challenge page only after they're approved.
4. Quit the challenge ("I'm Done Voting" button). The participant is redirected to the comment page followed by the goodbye message.

Comment and Goodbye Message

The comment page gives the participant a chance to give you a free-form statement.

The goodbye message consists of custom text, a button to return to voting and a goodbye button that redirects to another web site. Survey owners can customize each survey with its own goodbye message and specify where the goodbye button links to.

Survey owners may also choose to show the current results to participants. A simple table of ideas in rank order appears on this page but does not show the score for each idea.