OT: Football Survey

[diehardbroncosfan]

First thing first: 388 post rule. I get it. You can choose to ignore this post if you want.

I don't normally post threads (usually I'm a lurker, except for on game day), but I'm running out of options. I attend graduate school at the University of Kansas and am running a survey of parents to test their media usage, football consumption, and other football-related habits to try and see what connection there is between the amount of football that a parent watches and the likelihood that the parent in question will allow their child to participate in football.

The survey, which is intended for parents, is 32 questions long and should take no longer than 5-10 minutes. If you are interested in the results, please take the survey and be sure to pass it on to other parents you think might be interested. I will pass along any results after the paper is complete if there is any interest. It can be found at: https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_d4G79DyLTythzhP

Again, feel free to ignore this post in its entirety, except perhaps for the most important part: GO BRONCOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Pick Six]

Since you are a Jayhawk student, that's reason enough to ignore it. I'm kidding! (sort of). I'm not a parent, but good luck with the survey...

[diehardbroncosfan]

Since you are a Jayhawk student, that's reason enough to ignore it. I'm kidding! (sort of). I'm not a parent, but good luck with the survey...

Jayhawk student, but I could care less about any of their sports teams. Nebraska fan for life over here.

[DaFace]

I'm a professional survey researcher. Are you interested in a few critiques on the survey itself? I'm happy to provide it, but don't want to give unwanted advice.

[diehardbroncosfan]

I'm a professional survey researcher. Are you interested in a few critiques on the survey itself? I'm happy to provide it, but don't want to give unwanted advice.

Yes please. Any advice is more than welcome. This is my first time really trying anything like this.

[DaFace]

Yes please. Any advice is more than welcome. This is my first time really trying anything like this.

Cool. A few tips then:

• I know you're aiming the survey at parents, but you can't post something online and expect that people won't look at it if they don't fit the profile you're looking for. Your first question should include a "none" option so that you can identify non-parents and remove them from your analysis. Ideally, you'd also put some logic on the 2nd question so that it doesn't show up unless they have kids as well (or you could add a "none" option to that one too).
• The second question is worded a bit confusingly. At a minimum, you might make it plural (grades of children) so that people understand they should check more than one.
• I'm not a fan of the scale you use on the third one (activity). Scales can be either bipolar (e.g., agree to disagree) or unipolar (e.g., not at all interested to very interested). There really aren't degrees of "inactive". In other words, inactive is zero activity, so you can't be more or less around that zero. Your endpoints are fine, but the ones in between are messy. Honestly, I'd probably just leave them out and label the two ends. There's nothing wrong with that.
• All of your agree/disagree questions are fine in general. However, since this is a bipolar scale, the best way to do it is to mirror the scales on the two ends, so your first option would be "strongly disagree". This one's not a big deal, though.
• Your age scale is weird. The only outright problem is that 59-year-olds don't know which one to check, but I'd probably go with 18-29 for the bottom one to make it nice and parallel.

Hope that helps. None of these are huge deals, but they'll clean up your survey a bit.

[diehardbroncosfan]

Thanks!

[DaFace]

No problem at all. Good luck with your project!

[Kaylore]

Stupid Chief fan...helping people with their homework....is there no end!?!?!!?

[DaFace]

Stupid Chief fan...helping people with their homework....is there no end!?!?!!?

Heh...honestly it's mostly just that bad survey design bugs me, so I couldn't help myself. (No offense intended, OP.)