Re: survey Friends of GNOME donors

[John Williams <john williams lists gmail com>]

2009/5/22 Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>

FYI, Behdad pointed me at LimeSurvey which he had installed and I created a draft, http://www.gnome.org/~behdad/survey/index.php?sid=16424&lang=en.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

I would like to know the gender breakdown because I think Friends of GNOME might be more users than just developers and I'd like to know if women are using GNOME. They aren't developing it in large numbers. I think encouraging women to participate is something the GNOME community has done and wants to continue.

Check.

I'd also like to know the breakdown of students, developers, retired folks, etc as I think it will help us recruit in the future. If 50% of respondents are students, then we should be working more closely with universities.

Check.

 

So we've got LimeSurvey, an open source tool now ...

I was unaware of that.  Thanks for the tip!

 

"We'd like to ask for your help in finding out how we can do better.  When we tested this survey we found that most people could complete it in three minutes or less.  If you can help us by participating, we will use the information to improve our offerings."

I think that would go well in the email asking them to participate, but at the top of the survey shouldn't it be shorter?

Yes.  A survey should always have a "cover letter", whether it's by mail or electronic.  This serves as the recruitment device.

You donated to Friends of GNOME in the past year. Please help us by taking this survey in 3 minutes or less.

1. Are you ... (check all that apply)
- GNOME user
- GNOME developer
- GNOME contributor (event planning, documentation, translation, web page creation, ...)
- GNOME Foundation member
- GNOME fan
- Other ______________

(Some further explanation --- by popup, hover etc. is helpful. For example: If I develop on GNOME but don't have a module in the official module-set, am I a GNOME developer?

There's a help option for every question. If people want to suggest text or at least which ones are confusing, I'll add it.

Cool.  Another general tip: always pre-test.  That's so the claim made in the invitation letter ("most people will be able to complete the survey in x minutes" is true, and to spot errors and suggest improvements.  Even people who've been designing surveys for decades always pre-test each new one they create.  Aim to have as many pre-testers as you can get (and are willing to analyse).

 

2. Do you use ... (check all that apply)
- GNOME desktop
- GNOME applications like Abiword, Gimp, Banshee, Inkscape (which ones should we list here?)
- GNOME products on Windows
- GNOME products on KDE
- None of the above

What is the purpose of this question?  I can't see it.

We don't have a clue what people use or what they value. We assume that everyone using GNOME is using the "GNOME desktop" but we don't know that. What if all they are using is GNOME games on the default distro that comes with their Eee PC?

I see.  Thanks.

3. Which GNOME Foundation activities do you value most?
- Hackfests
- GUADEC
- 6 month releases
- web pages
- forums
- translations
- documentation
- other ____________

Nice.  Perhaps some more on what you mean by "value"?

How about "Which GNOME Foundation activities do you think are most important?"

To whom?  What do you want to find out with this question?  If it's whether to put more effort in to making something better, or doing it more often, or doing more of it,  ask each of these questions separately and explicitly.  The question should not disguise the purpose of asking it.

 

4. What would you like to see the GNOME Foundation do over the next year? (check all that apply)
- exactly what it's doing now
- more developer events
- more outreach to end users
- more end user events
- more new products
- more support of existing products
- more work with distributors

Excellent.  But is this list exhaustive?

No. Feel free to suggest more!

If you can't get more from the pre-testers, or can't think of any, simply include an "other: please specify" option.
 

P.S.  I'm teaching an Honours course in Marketing Research in the second half of this year (it's near the end of the first semester here in New Zealand).  There is a chance that we could make your problem part of the course work.  Would that be helpful?  The problem from your point of view would be that you wouldn't get a final report from students until October or so.

That's an awesome offer!

I'd like to do this sooner as we are doing a big Friends push right now. However, we always need round #2 or we could survey a different group of people.

The other people I'd really like to survey is GNOME Foundation members. I'd like to find out what the Foundation could do for them.

OK.  Let me know if I can help.

And the group I'd really, really like to survey is GNOME users but I don't have a great way to reach them except to assume that Friends of GNOME, GNOME Foundation members, etc are all GNOME users.

A perennial problem.  I wish I had a solution to that one ...
Historical efforts can be found here:

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/SurveyUsers
http://live.gnome.org/CountingUsers

-- 
John Williams
Professional Idiot