Problem with Surveys Asking for "Agree" or "Disagree" Using Radio Buttons

I filled out a short survey today (which I appreciated for being short) that asked me to assess my satisfaction for an event I recently attended. What's notable about the experience was that just before I was about to click the Submit button I decided to check my 3 responses one more time. I was very glad I checked, because I realized that all of my responses were the exact opposite of what I intended, and so I corrected each response before making my final submission.

The problem: I had selected "disagree" for every item with which I agreed and vice versa for ones with which I disagreed.

How often do people encounter surveys that list a bunch of statements and then give radio buttons for indicating one of the following (or similar) sentiments:

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

I think that based on each person's individual experiences, the person may assume that "Strongly Agree" either always falls on the left or always falls on the right side of the response matrix without pausing to actually read the survey. If the respondent is in a hurry to complete a survey, are the differences between the following two screenshots really all that apparent?

To reduce the chance of survey results being invalidated by responses that are completely wrong because the person intended the response on the other end of the spectrum, picklists may be used in place of radio buttons. I'll outline a few reasons why I think picklists are the better choice.

1. Picklists force people to read.

When a user is confronted with a picklist that starts with an option like "--Select a Response--", he or she must read all of the picklist options in order to pick the right value.

2. Keyboard shortcuts make picklists more usable.

Imagine a standardized picklist that has the following options:

• Agree
• Agree, Strongly
• Disagree
• Disagree, Strongly
• Neutral

When a user tabs to the input and when the input has focus, the user can:

• Press A once for "Agree";
• Press A twice for "Agree, Strongly";
• Press D once for "Disagree";
• Press D twice for "Disagree, Strongly"; or
• Press N for "Neutral".

In my mind, this makes surveys easier to fill out in less time, which should increase the response rate by telling users that a survey would only take 1 minute instead of 2.

Streamlined Login for MediaWiki

I love MediaWiki overall, but I cannot stand the way the login prompt works when an unauthenticated user tries to access a protected page.

The tedious process is basically as follows:

1. User clicks a link to a protected page. A page with "duh" instructions is displayed, forcing the user to click a link to get to a login form.
2. User clicks the link to get to the login form. Why doesn't the login form automatically give focus to the Username field?
3. User clicks in the Username field just to start typing in a username.

The process really should be as follows:

1. User clicks a link to a protected page.
2. User immediately starts typing a username.

So, to make it easier for users to like and adopt our MediaWiki instance, I customized two files: /includes/OutputPage.php and /includes/templates/Userlogin.php.

In case anyone wants to easily copy the code, I've uploaded my notes on this hack. Now I'm finally ready to start publicizing our MediaWiki internally and getting people excited about it!

This hack was tested on the following browsers in Mac OS X Lion:

• Safari 5.1.1
• Firefox 8.0.1
• Chrome 15.0

Note: This implementation causes the instructions page to fully load before JavaScript redirects the user to the actual login page. Any suggestions on how to skip the loading of the instructions page altogether will be much appreciated.

Note: grep -R alone is a significant reason why Linux- and Unix-based OS's (e.g., Mac) are so much better for developers than Windows, out of the box.