Did you take the DDI Survey?

catsclaw227 · Apr 15, 2009

Simple poll. Did you take the DDI survey?

Fallen Seraph · Apr 15, 2009

Yup, I have taken all the D&D surveys so far.

Crothian · Apr 15, 2009

Ya, when they get linked here on EN World it makes it easy to do so.

Festivus · Apr 15, 2009

Is there a new one? I didn't notice it. I did one a few months back.

deadsmurf · Apr 15, 2009

Festivus said:
Is there a new one? I didn't notice it. I did one a few months back.

I'm pretty sure this is referring to the one they are publicly showing the results to here D&D Insider Survey Results

Festivus · Apr 15, 2009

I am a bit slow on the uptake today I guess, missed that the results were out.

catsclaw227 · Apr 15, 2009

Interesting so far 6 of every 7 poll respondents took the DDI survey. I wonder if the 4000 surveys they received only count the respondents that were given the full survey by answering the initial qualifying question(s) correctly.

I recall a number of people answered the initial one or two questions that fired a skip pattern that bypassed the rest of the survey directly into a thank you page.

Note: These types of qualifying questions are in almost 90% of surveys run by any reputable marketing company. Our sister company, a health & wellness marketing analysis company, will often spend weeks formulating the question order, question skip patterns, and appropriately neutral questions to generate the unbiased responses they need for their trends reports.

Lanefan · Apr 15, 2009

catsclaw227 said:
Interesting so far 6 of every 7 poll respondents took the DDI survey. I wonder if the 4000 surveys they received only count the respondents that were given the full survey by answering the initial qualifying question(s) correctly.

I recall a number of people answered the initial one or two questions that fired a skip pattern that bypassed the rest of the survey directly into a thank you page.

Note: These types of qualifying questions are in almost 90% of surveys run by any reputable marketing company. Our sister company, a health & wellness marketing analysis company, will often spend weeks formulating the question order, question skip patterns, and appropriately neutral questions to generate the unbiased responses they need for their trends reports.

I despise surveys like that. Every person who "fails" the qualifying questions is another voice not heard; and if done right the qualifying questions can eliminate the "wrong" sort of people, to ensure that particular viewpoints fare better (or worse) in the survey than reality would dictate.

WotC's now-legendary customer survey they ran during the design process for 3e was like this. One qualifying question was age, and if you were over a certain age (35 at the time, I think; so about 45 now) you failed. Period. Result: many old-school gamers had no input, leading to a much different game based on a much different set of assumptions than, I think, would otherwise have been the case.

In a situation like this one, where they're trying to get at the whole fanbase (or potential fanbase to find out what could make it into a real fanbase), they need to include every response. The only proviso, of course, is to try to keep it at one person, one vote...

Lan-"I think I did the DDI survey; I did *a* survey, anyway"-efan

darjr · Apr 15, 2009

There was a newer survey, just recently. I can't seem to find it now.

catsclaw227 · Apr 15, 2009

Lanefan said:
I despise surveys like that. Every person who "fails" the qualifying questions is another voice not heard; and if done right the qualifying questions can eliminate the "wrong" sort of people, to ensure that particular viewpoints fare better (or worse) in the survey than reality would dictate.

The purpose of these kinds of skip patterns is to make sure you are polling a group that has much more vested interest or a more valid opinion about something.

For example a Food company is doing a survey about fast food restaurants, asking about the menu and what things they like.

The first question will ask which FF joints they have eaten at in the past year. If they answer the "none" option, they might skip past a WHOLE bunch of questions like "Did you prefer the Whopper or the Quarter Pounder?"

I think, in the case of the WOTC survey, one of the questions was something like "Do you play D&D?". Well, if you answered "no", you might not have been the target audience for the "What can we do to make the DDI better" master survey topic. The non-playing D&D respondent, if taken through the whole survey, will unnecessarily skew answers because, well they just AREN'T a primary, secondary or even a tertiary target for the DDI.

You might not like that these kinds of survey methods exist, but years of hardcore statistical analysis tells these kinds of research marketing specialists that your answers will only incorrectly or adversely affect the outcomes that could help the company that pays them to survey you.

And, recalling the URL, I think this was an outsourced survey.