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A Broadband Survey That Asks the Right Questions
Lauren Weinstein writes "I've just deployed the first ever Broadband Survey under the auspices of GCTIP, which asks questions that the FCC neglected to ask about service types, promised vs. actual broadband speeds, user satisfaction (or lack thereof) with their ISPs and local ISP competition, etc. I'm already finding the detailed comments many persons are leaving on the survey form to be extremely illuminating and with sufficient participation I'm hoping my reports from this data will be useful to the Internet community broadly."
I would never admit to running IIS on slashdot. I'd rather run a fake survey with a skewed population.
I.e., ones that are loaded so as to produce the results that the author wants to see.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Because we, as tech-savvy geeks, are most likely to be aware of the problems with the internet service we're using, and the ones most interested in them being fixed. Not that I can complain, as I get better speed than advertised on my entry-level cable connection (which I reported on the survey form).
Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.
That page desperately needs text boxes to input all the answers about bandwidth/latency/jitter.
I filled out the survey, but sweet tap dancing Jesus do I pity the person(s) who have to turn the results into useable data.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That is one incredibly precise versioning scheme...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Have fun evaluating all those textboxes!
No kidding. Who the hell in their right mind has a free-form text box to enter *both* your download and upload speed in bits?
My answer: People stopped using 9600 baud modems a long time ago, so I'm not sure how many bits I get--or even kilobits. Sure, I could do the math, but your survey is retarded. I get 15 MEGABITS (or should I sound like a retard and use the prefix MEBI?!?) down burstable to 30, and 2 megabits up, burstable to 0.0005 gigabits up. Have fun with the conversion, fuckers.
There's no place like
This, in all honesty, is the worst survey I have ever seen, and I work with language teachers.
Not only are you setting yourself up for selection bias (as many others have pointed out), you've got all these free-answer text boxes all over it. Have you given any thought whatsoever to what you're going to do with the "data" that you get from this instrument?
Things like network speed should be in set categories. Satisfaction should be on a Likert scale, and should be broken down into aspects of interest (satisfaction with upload, download, etc.). The ISPs should be on a drop-down menu, not free answer (you'll need to include an "Other"). ZIP and City should be in separate fields (how are you going to parse those?--yes, it can be done, BUT WHY???).
Your question about maximum upload and download speed and limit and favorite color... Son, you make me want to stab out my eyes with a fork. What are you asking with that question? Whatever it is, it should be several questions with constrained responses.
One of the cardinal rules of survey design is that it should be quick and easy for people to fill out. Do the hard work for them, and let them just tick boxes. If you don't, they won't take it and all you'll get is data skewed toward people who--like you--actually care enough to type up a bunch of thoughts. I care about broadband, but even I am not interested in blathering away into a text box.
Pray tell, what "statistical purposes" would my email address be used for? Last I knew, principal components analysis only took numeric data... Same for cluster analysis. "This will only be used for magical statistics that use email addresses as variables... Or if we want to drop a line and say hi." Please.
You are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. You will need to go through with Nvivo or something to categorize all the garbage you get from this, and even if you present results, all you're really going to be presenting is "here is some stuff that people said." I have no time for listening to results of surveys like that. It's softheaded gibberish.
You are lucky you're not a student in my research practicum. There's no way I'd sign off on this as a research instrument.