Straightlining vs. Answering Your Stupid Question Honestly

OK, this is something I hadn’t thought of before.
When I’m staring at a bad survey question — asking me to compare two absolutely identical companies in a matrix, for instance — my tendency is to do this:

They’re equal. There’s no difference between Visa and MasterCard in my mind. Discover and American Express, those are different, [...]

Another Fine Matrix

First, look at this full-size. See how there are 14 brands of cat food going across the top? I already told it I’d never heard of five of them, and yet here they all are again. It’s one thing to ask me if I’ve ever heard of a brand and to then, even if I [...]

Zogby Motorcycle Emptiness

What fresh hell is this? John Zogby has discovered the matrix? And somehow made it uglier than any other matrix in the history of research? All true, and more on that in a moment, but first, this unusual use of the ticky box:

That’s probably illegible unless you click on it, but the gist is I’m [...]

Adblock? Never heard of it!

Here’s what I saw on the first screen of a survey Food and Wine magazine wanted me to take:

(I entered my actual age for the question; I changed it to 99 for the screengrab.)
There’s no “continue” button here. I was initially hopeful that it was one of those speedy flash-based things that would zip me [...]

Is it me?

You really want me to think about whether or not any of these refrigerated products could best be described as being “warm?” Because, ew.)

Whoa, Two Months?

Crap, I know I’ve been busy, but this is ridiculous.
Still fighting the good fight, but haven’t had time to write about (or even look at) much research lately. I did catch this grid a couple days ago, and I think it’s worth throwing up and looking at, not because it’s a particularly terrible example (it’s [...]

Best Buy Has Some Issues

From this story at The Consumerist. I’m sure it’s just a browser rendering issue that would have been solved with more testing, but right now, it’s just one of my all time favorite matrixes:

Well done, Best Buy!

SSI: Matrixes Make Us Cry, Too.

“We know respondents don’t like grids,” Jackie Lorch, SSI VP, Global Knowledge Management, points out. “They’ve been telling us that for years in focus groups and feedback, but we’ve always thought of grids as a necessary evil in questionnaire design. Now, we’re beginning to learn that not only are grids frustrating [...]

Harris Thinks Outside The Box

Not in a good way, though:

It’s always possible this was a Firefox-only problem, but I (a) doubt it and (b) don’t think that makes this OK either, actually.
It’s not eggregious, of course, just … off, and as such, distracting. Don’t distract your respondents; don’t make them take time out from thinking about their answers to [...]

Wow. Just wow.

You’ll have to excuse the low quality of the image here; I snagged it off a WebEx meeting where the presenter flashed it by as part of a PowerPoint he was sharing. I don’t know the source, I don’t know the rationale, I just know it’s probably going to be the worst matrix you ever [...]