Abstract
As a new medium for questionnaire delivery, the Internet has the potential to revolutionize the survey process. Online-questionnaires can provide many capabilities not found in traditional paper-based questionnaires. Despite this, and the introduction of a plethora of tools to support online-questionnaire creation, current electronic survey design typically replicates the look-and-feel of paper-based questionnaires, thus failing to harness the full power of the electronic delivery medium. A recent environmental scan of online-questionnaire design tools found that little, if any, support is incorporated within these tools to guide questionnaire designers according to best-practice [Lumsden & Morgan 2005]. This paper briefly introduces a comprehensive set of guidelines for the design of online-questionnaires. Drawn from relevant disparate sources, all the guidelines incorporated within the set are proven in their own right; as an initial assessment of the value of the set of guidelines as a practical reference guide, we undertook an informal study to observe the effect of introducing the guidelines into the design process for a complex online-questionnaire. The paper discusses the qualitative findings — which are encouraging for the role of the guidelines in the ‘bigger picture’ of online survey delivery across many domains such as e-government, e-business, and e-health — of this case study.
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Lumsden, J., Flinn, S., Anderson, M., Morgan, W. (2006). What Difference Do Guidelines Make? An Observational Study of Online-questionnaire Design Guidelines Put to Practical Use. In: McEwan, T., Gulliksen, J., Benyon, D. (eds) People and Computers XIX — The Bigger Picture. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-249-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-249-7_5
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