1. Web-Based Surveys Questions, Answers, and Designs Kent L. Norman Department of Psychology Human/Computer Interaction Lab Laboratory for Automation Psychology http://lap.umd.edu

2. Reasons for Web-based Surveys: Cost-efficiency, Dissemination-collection, Central control Automation Hypermedia

3. Pitfalls of Bad Design: Good ideas don't always migrate directly to the Web. Bad design is easier to generate than good design. One bad design leads to another.

4. Interface Issues with Surveys Formatting and Navigation (Norman,Friedman, Norman & Stevenson, 2000) Organization of Items and Navigation (Norman, Slaughter, Freidman, Norman, Stevenson, 2000) Automatic Customization (Norman, Pleskac, & Norman, 2001 Edits and Corrections and Navigation Conditional Jumps and Navigation (Norman, 2001; Norman & Pleskac, 2002)

5. Experiment Our experiment compared three different designs: –Manual Scrolling, –Automatic Items –Automatic Scrolling Survey included successive jumps of one, two, and three items. Respondents were 36 undergraduate students in a within subjects factorial design.

6. Manual Scrolling

7. Automatic Items Automatically jumps to the next appropriate item when alternative is clicked.

8. Automatic Scrolling Automatically scrolls down to the next appropriate item when alternative is clicked.

9. Results Automatic Item was the fastest, especially for 3 follow-up questions.

10. Expanding Clicking on a triangle expands the survey to show follow-up or skipped questions.

11. Automatic Gray Out Automatically grays out items to be skipped when an alternative is clicked.

12. Guidelines Reduce the branching instructions to a minimum to reduce reading time, confusion, and perceived difficulty of the questionnaire. Automate conditional branching when possible, but allow the respondent to override branching if there is a need to do so on the part of the respondent.

13. Guidelines Hide follow-up questions to shorten the apparent length of the questionnaire. Make skipped questions available only if the respondent specifically wishes to view them. When the respondent is allowed to see and answer all questions, implement logic and consistency checks on conditional branches.

14. Guidelines Streamline forward movement through the questionnaire while allowing backtracking to view or change answers. Finally, although good design seems intuitive, it requires usability testing before final implementation.

15. Credits Support from the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Research Division. Thanks to students, Tim Pleskac, Kirk Norman, Nick Robb. http://lap.umd.edu kent_norman@lap.umd.edu

16. References Norman K. L. & Pleskac (January 2002). Conditional Branching in Computerized Self-Administered Questionnaires: An Empirical Study. LAP- 2002-01, HCIL-2002-02, CS-TR-4323, UMIACS-TR-2002-05. Norman K. L. (November 2001). Implementation of Conditional Branching in Computerized Self-Administered Questionnaires. LAP-2001-02, HCIL-2001- 26, CS-TR-4319, UMIACS-TR-2002-1. Norman K. L., Pleskac T.J., Norman K. (May 2001) Navigational Issues in the Design of On-Line Self-Administered Questionnaires: The Effect of Training and Familiarity. LAP-2001-01, HCIL-2001-09, CS-TR-4255, UMIACS-TR- 2001-38. Norman K., Slaughter L. Friedman Z.,Norman K.,Stevenson R. (October 2000). Dual Navigation of Computerized Self-Administered Questionnaires and Organizational Records. LAP-2000-02, HCIL-2000-22, CS-TR-4192, UMIACS-TR-2000-71. Norman, K. L., Friedman, Z., Norman, K. D., & Stevenson, R. (2000). Navigational Issues in the Design of On-Line Self Administered Questionnaires (HCIL-TR-2000-10, LAP-TR-2000-01)