Surveys in Practice and Theory

How to get useful data using surveys

Surveys: they sound so easy to do well, but so often end up being disappointing. How often have you been asked to respond to a survey, but felt that it failed to get your real opinion about the topic?

Caroline Jarrett, the forms expert, wants to find out about what you are doing in practice. What works for you, what doesn't? What are your ideas for making your surveys more useful to your organization?

In return, she'll share her insights from practice - and from theory. What do the survey methodologists tell us to do, and do we think that will work for us in practice?

Who should come?

This workshop is for you if:

• You have organized, run and analyzed at least one survey
• You have permission to share the insights you have gained about surveys from your work.
• You want to compare what you do in practice, successes and failures, with what works, and what doesn't, for other people.

What you will learn

You will learn:

• Why surveys are hard to do well
• What the theory tells us about an ideal process for developing your survey, and what happens in practice.
• The importance of different types of error in surveys: sampling, non-response, and measurement
• Tips from the survey methodologists on improving your survey

What this workshop will be like

There will be PowerPoint slides, but please come to this workshop expecting to join in, and to share your experiences and ideas about creating better surveys.

Detailed outline

About the Speaker

Caroline Jarrett Usability consultant Effortmark Ltd Email: caroline.jarrett@effortmark.co.uk

Caroline Jarrett is the author of "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability."
"If your web site includes forms, you need this book. It's that simple." Ginny Redish

Caroline specializes in usability of forms and work processes involving forms. She enjoys working on any type of form or questionnaire and says "Government forms are my favorites" How often do you hear that?

Her current practice is about one-third forms design, on paper and on the web, and about two-thirds helping clients with content-rich web sites. This may include improving the information architecture, using search logs to examine patterns of usage, teaching editing skills, actually doing the editing of key pages, and user research about how users explore and use large web sites.

She is co-author of "User Interface Design and Evaluation" (Morgan Kaufmann, 2005) and of "Forms that Work" (Morgan Kaufmann, 2008).

Caroline holds an MA and MBA, and is a Chartered Engineer.