so I go onto this department store website and they ask if I’m ok with answering their survey when I’m done, to give them feedback about using their website – cool, I think, and on the whole it wasn’t too painful, but…
one question was asking about my use of other (competing) websites, stuff like have I used them in the last six months, have I bought from them – well, I don’t remember! and there was no option to say “don’t remember” or “n/a” or “pass”, you had to pick an answer.
the other bit that annoyed me was when they asked how often I visit their own site, with the options being (from memory) something like:
– weekly
– monthly
– this is the first time I’ve visited
– rarely, I prefer to shop at the store
Which is silly – my answer is “rarely” but it’s not because I prefer to shop at the store, it’s just because I don’t shop for clothes very often.
Who designs these surveys, and which planet do these people come from?
Meirav's Blog 
I think that any time you write a survey, you should run it past 10 or 20 people first and get their responses, because inevitably you’ve got a certain point of view or mindset when you write the survey and tend to ignore obvious things that someone else might pick up on immediately. When you’re trying to get very specific answers, you don’t often think about all the other possible answers that a question could invoke.
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yup. they need to run it past a mixed section of people. and I think one of the basics should be, if you’re asking a question, always leave room for the possibility that this person doesn’t know/can’t remember/doesn’t have an opinion about it. There’s got to be a way to skip a question.
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These are a special species called web designers, they see codes instead of websites and more often then not they do all their shopping online, and thus cannot comprehend people that don’t :p
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:-)
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I also posted this on Google+ and had a great reply there, from Ursula Rodgers, who simply answered my question:
“Well, they’re people who are going to get absolutely terrible, meaningless data. :)”
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