Dear Florian,

Thanks for your feedback! And yes, it was a busy month of October for me, Shobana and Arno with the survey advertising on all channels, e-mails, encouragement and prodding to get to the 435 responses in the end. I am proud of this achievement.

Your post shows how the same data can be interpreted in different ways : For Question 23 about the Featured Users my conclusion would have been that 44% of people liked it or liked it a lot! And that only 19% didn't like it. (and 37% of people are indifferent about it)
A few of the comments for that question said they really liked the interview part about it...
(I am still going to post the comments later)

And about the "game-like gimmicks", it is true that the "rating users" did not come out high in this survey. Perhaps people also don't like the idea of being rated themselves. (the "rating posts" option on the other hand was more popular).

But we have no way of knowing whether the huge number of people who read quite often but who don't post often could be encouraged to post more often if there were more "special effects" from the gamification repertoir. This is one question we didn't ask: "What could be done to make you post more often?" The answer I hear most often from experienced people is "I don't have time" or "I don't want to make time for this" or "If I need to know something, I just ask some of my colleagues in my network by e-mail.", and the answer from inexperienced people is often "I have nothing yet to contribute / I am intimdated by the high level of expertise by other people / I don't want to say anything stupid that I will be embarrased about in years to come".

I think though that a better front door page and some other small improvements (tweaks, as you call them) might lower the hurdle for posting, especially perhaps for the newcomers.

Any more feedback by anyone?

Cheers,
Elisabeth

P.S. Mughal, I have already posted my report on Part 1 of the survey on 7 Nov (scrol up); and the written report for Part 2 I am still busy with. Will post it soon but would also be keen to hear people's interpretations of the graphs (like Florian did) without being biased by my interpretations of the figures.

Dear Elisabeth,

That is an awful lot of work that you have done! That is great.
You have, however, presented the results. Where are your evaluations and findings?

Regards,
F H Mughal

Thanks a lot for posting the result of this survey! You really did a lot of effort to get people participate and you achieved really a good result with more than 10 %. Well done!

A few reactions or comments to the results:

- Overall, I think the survey shows that people are quite happy with the forum as it is. A few tweaks here and there may be useful, but all in all, there seems to be no big need for improvement
- Q4: 7% of the respondents, that is 30 people, post weekly or more often, the rest once per month or less. Assuming that all active forum users responded to the survey, this means that only about 30 out of 4000 registered members write weekly. This puts the high number of members a bit in perspective. 30 really active members is still not bad though...
- Q13: language seems one part where need for improvement is really felt... and this without asking the people who really have problems with the language.
- Q23/24: more than half don't like or don't care for the "featured forum member" and "rating users" is the only unpopular one of the suggested improvements. Seems people don't want to rate other people or be rated. My interpretation is that people come to Susana really for professional discussions, they don't really want game-like gimmicks.

Ok, looking forward for more results and your analysis.

Best wishes,
Florian

Here comes Part 2 of the survey results. Part 2 was about "Your opinions and ideas for improvements".

I am posting just the graphs on their own first, and my report with observations and comments later. Plenty of comments were also made in the free text fields and I am trying to condense them or just pick out the most important ones. This will come in a subsequent post.

Meanwhile, what do you think of these results? Do you find any of it surprising?


Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear all,

You are probably eagerly awaiting the results of our first large forum user survey which we ran during October. I am happy to bring to you the first part of the results now!

Firstly, let me thank the 435 participants who took the survey- thanks so much!! We have surpassed our aim (which was 10% of all SuSanA members, or 400 participants). All participants who left their e-mail address to take part in the prize lottery should by now have recieved an e-mail by Shobana from the SuSanA secretariat who is kindly sorting out the prizes to match as closely as possible your desired prize with the prizes available! Thanks again to SEI, GIZ, Eawag-Sandec and SHARE for making these 150+ prizes available.

In this report I have compiled the results of Part 1 of the survey (Part 1 was on "Your preferences as a Forum user"). It is so far just the raw results and my first set of observations but without an in-depth discussion of the next steps we should take (this will take a bit more time to develop):




I invite you all to read through my observations and tell me if there are other important observations to be made from the data that I hadn't thought of yet? And please tell me your own conclusions from looking at this data?

I have also copied some of the graphs from the report below, in order to spark your interest in opening the pdf file or - if you don't have time to look at the pdf file - to give you a quick overview of the resuls of Part 1:






















The results from the second part of the survey questions ("Your opinions and ideas for improvements") will come by Monday, as soon as I am through with it all. There were so many comments in the comments fields, it is taking me a while to wade through them all!

I think we have a really rich set of data here and I feel that I got to know "you" and "your preferences" a bit better this way.

Enjoy the reading and I am looking forward to your feedback and observations if you have any?

Regards,
Elisabeth

[Start of Page 2 of the discussion]


Dear Mughal,

Yea, sorry, the Word version of the survey doesn't look very pretty but it still would work (it would take me too long to make the formatting nice, given that only a dozen people or so from China would probably take the survey by using the Word document? They could also use the pdf file: print it and then place their ticks, then take a photo with their smartpone and send me the photos. I know it's awkward but I can't think of a better solution for those who cannot access Google forms).

Surveymonkey is a really nice online tool to do surveys. The basic version of Surveymonkey is for free which is why many people like to use it. The advanced version with extra features costs money (but not very much).
See www.surveymonkey.com

I used to use Surveymonkey for surveys in the past but now that I have discovered Google forms thanks to Roslyn (completely free of charge, no limits on questions or on participant numbers (or if there are limits, the number is very large)), I will stick with that one for future surveys that I might be involved in.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

Thanks for caring about the Chinese friends. Word format is not quite in order. Please ask your IT guru to improve it. No need to rush in - take your time.

What are those "surveymonkey" surveys? I get those from other reputed organizations.

Cheers,
F H Mughal


[End of Page 1 of the discussion]

Dear all,

We have now reached nearly 400 responses to our Discussion Forum User Survey (thank you!!), but we still want more.

It has been brought to our attention that in China people cannot access the survey because:

I can not do it because the survey pointing to google which is forbidden in China.

I didn't know that. Are other countries also affected in this way? (the survey was created using a thing called "Google Forms")

As we really want to hear everyone's voice, I am attaching here the survey also in pdf and Word format. The Word format is not as pretty but the answers could be selected with colour.

Thanks for taking the extra step to fill this in. You can just e-mail it back to me at:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For everyone else, the link to the survey is still the same:
docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZaO6UIuG68XufQh...oJ_fXWPpQH4/viewform

Thank you to everyone who has already participated! The results are looking very interesting, and I will be sharing them with you next week after the survey has closed this weekend.

Regards,
Elisabeth

I know how hard it is to get suffiecent people participating in an online survey...

So I want to join those above in encouranging everybody who has not yet, to take the 5-10 min and fill out the form. Its done really quickly and will help to have a much more meaningfull result of the survey. It's also a good chance to express wishes for new or better forum features.

Regards, Florian

I have participated in the survey. It is a wonderful experience. I encourage all the users to kindly participate in the survey. While the prizes are attractive (like Doreen, I wish I could get all the prizes - they will significantly to my mini-library!!
I would like users to note that the moderators have taken pains in developing this exciting survey, and we are morally bound, as responsible persons, to respond accordingly.

I can't wait to see the results!!

F H Mughal

Hi, everyone,

I love the SuSanA forum and so does everyone I know who uses it. At PHLUSH we get lots and lots of unsolicited questions on topics ranging from public toilet access issues to microbiology. We cannot possibly even try answer them. So we send people to the Forum, ask them to sign up, and become part of the conversation.

Now here's an opportunity for all of us to make the Forum even better. TAKE THIS SURVEY! docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZaO6UIuG68XufQh...oJ_fXWPpQH4/viewform And if you scroll down below you see the prizes! Books include acclaimed favorites and some brand new titles. Hard copies!

Wouldn't you like to get away from your screen and curl up with a great paper book? But first you have to invest 4 or 5 minutes and TAKE THE SURVEY!

Carol


+++++++++
Note by moderator (EvM): We have by now 212 responses for the survey but we are aiming for a response rate of 10%, meaning 400 responses. So please do take part in the survey, even if you have not used the discussion forum so much in the past!

Hi Everyone,

I am writing to encourage everyone to participate in this user survey.
We would really like to know the opinions of the 4000 members of this forum, especially the Silent Majority, who we never hear from.

For example, if you just like to read the posts and it is useful to you, you can say so.
If you do not participate because you are disappointed for some reason, tell us so we can try to fix the problem.

An important section of the survey is on how to best serve members for whom English is not their native language. If you would be more comfortable to post in a different language, tell us what language you would like to write in so we can try to set that up.

One of the key goals of the survey is to try to figure out how to get more people involved and to make the Forum more interactive. I mentioned some suggestions in the second part of my Featured User Interview:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/145-fe...m-california-ecuador

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday