Usability Rant: How to collect completely invalid survey data
Originally published at jkparker.ca. Please leave any comments there.
This evening I decided to register for the Subaru Vancouver International Sprint Tri. Like most local runs and triathlons they’re using Events Online to manage registration. However, unlike most other local races the Subaru Tri registration form managed to annoy me by requiring answers to marketing-related questions.
Along with the usual registration stuff like my age and t-shirt size, I was presented with the following question:
POWERBAR QUESTIONNAIRE: Please indicate how important the following benefits are to you when purchasing an energy bar. Please rank from 1-10 with 10 being most important
This was followed by a list of ten drop down boxes, one for each “benefit.” There was also a question about which triathlon focussed magazines I like to read. When I declined to fill out these questions on my first try at registering, I got a page instructing me that I had missed some required questions. If I wanted to register I had to click the back button and fill in answers for all the marketing crap.
I certainly had no intention of being forced to provide this information, so I filled in “dummy” data for both the Powerbar and magazine questions. Now, maybe I’m just a particularly ornery user, but I suspect I’m not all that different from most other people, and that many others did the exact same thing as me.
Required fields certainly have their uses (For example: to ensure collection of necessary information such as name and address; or for use in online surveys that users undertake voluntarily). But forcing your users to provide answers to marketing questions when they are filling out a registration form (and paying a tidy sum for the privilege of registering, at that!) will just cause a whole lot of noise in the data! If the event organizers wanted to collect valid data, they should have made these questions optional, so only those people who wanted to provide valid answers would fill them out.