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    Usability Testing for Survey Research
    Usability Testing for Survey Research
    Usability Testing for Survey Research
    Ebook439 pages14 hours

    Usability Testing for Survey Research

    By Emily Geisen and Jennifer Romano Bergstrom

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    About this ebook

    Usability Testing for Survey Research provides researchers with a guide to the tools necessary to evaluate, test, and modify surveys in an iterative method during the survey pretesting process. It includes examples that apply usability to any type of survey during any stage of development, along with tactics on how to tailor usability testing to meet budget and scheduling constraints.

    The book's authors distill their experience to provide tips on how usability testing can be applied to paper surveys, mixed-mode surveys, interviewer-administered tools, and additional products.

    Readers will gain an understanding of usability and usability testing and why it is needed for survey research, along with guidance on how to design and conduct usability tests, analyze and report findings, ideas for how to tailor usability testing to meet budget and schedule constraints, and new knowledge on how to apply usability testing to other survey-related products, such as project websites and interviewer administered tools.

    • Explains how to design and conduct usability tests and analyze and report the findings
    • Includes examples on how to conduct usability testing on any type of survey, from a simple three-question survey on a mobile device, to a complex, multi-page establishment survey
    • Presents real-world examples from leading usability and survey professionals, including a diverse collection of case studies and considerations for using and combining other methods
    • Discusses the facilities, materials, and software needed for usability testing, including in-lab testing, remote testing, and eye tracking
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateFeb 15, 2017
    ISBN9780128036815
    Usability Testing for Survey Research
    Author

    Emily Geisen

    Emily Geisen is the manager of RTI’s cognitive/usability laboratory and specializes in designing and evaluating survey instruments to improve data quality and reduce respondent burden. In addition, Ms. Geisen teaches a graduate course on Questionnaire Design at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. In her tenure at RTI, she had conducted hundreds of usability tests on a variety of projects from the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates to the 2020 Census questionnaires. She was the 2010 conference chair for the Southern Association for Public Opinion Research (SAPOR) and the 2009–2011 secretary of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association. She is the 2016-18 American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Membership and Chapter Relations Communications sub-chair. Ms. Geisen developed a short course on Usability Testing for Survey Researchers that was taught at the 2011 annual SAPOR conference; the 2016 AAPOR annual conference; the 2016 International Conference on Questionnaire, Design, Development, Evaluation and Testing; and UNC’s Odum Institute. Ms. Geisen also teaches an Introduction to Focus Groups course at the Odum Institute. Ms. Geisen received her B.A. in Psychology and Statistics at Mount Holyoke College, and received her M.S. in Survey Methodology in 2004 from the University of Michigan’s Program in Survey Methodology where she was an Angus Campbell fellow. While attending the University of Michigan, she also worked at the Institute for Social Research.

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      Book preview

      Usability Testing for Survey Research - Emily Geisen

      book!

      Chapter 1

      Usability and Usability Testing

      Abstract

      This chapter provides a brief history of usability and explain the key components of usability testing—the product, the users of the product, users’ goals, the context of use, and the metrics of evaluation. We explain what these usability components mean when evaluating the usability of surveys. We discuss the importance of usability testing as a pretesting method, but note that it does not replace good questionnaire design. We conclude with a brief overview of the usability testing process as applied to survey research.

      Keywords

      Usability; usability testing; product; users; goals; key components of usability; context of use; usability metrics; accuracy; efficiency; satisfaction; pilot testing; cognitive testing

      When I (Emily) was attending graduate school, I met an engineer who worked at Ford Motor Company. He explained that it was his job to take artists’ concept drawings and use them to engineer a working car. He noted that while the designs were usually beautiful, modern, and stylish, they were not always usable. As a result, his conversations usually went something like this (Fig. 1.1):

      ENGINEER: This is a lovely design, but a car really must have wheels to function.

      ARTIST: Oh, but wheels are so ugly!

      Figure 1.1 A car without wheels might have a nice design, but people cannot use it.

      While it is obvious that cars need wheels to work, many aspects of what makes a design usable are not clear, which necessitates usability testing. In his ground-breaking book, The Design of Everyday Things, Norman (2002) demonstrated that design—and consequently, usability—affects things that people use, from teapots to airplanes to surveys.

      In this chapter, we provide a brief history of usability, make the case for why usability is needed for evaluating surveys, explain what it means—generally and specifically for survey research—and conclude with an overview of the usability testing process.

      A Brief History

      The concept of usability, which stems from the discipline of Human Factors, is grounded in industrial efficiency and has been around for centuries. Intuitive design, ease of use, and error reduction have long been used in war scenarios, such as in training soldiers and in designing airplane cockpits.

      The concept has been used for survey research for decades. Beginning in the late 1970s, a significant body of research evaluated how respondents completed paper surveys and forms, identifying designs and layouts that made surveys easier to use (Dillman, 1978, 1991, 1995; Dillman, Sinclair, & Clark, 1993; Jenkins & Dillman, 1997; Marquis, Nichols, & Tedesco, 1998).

      The terms usability engineering and usability were first used in 1979 to discuss how people interacted with computers (Bennett, 1979). In the 1980s, as personal computers became more affordable, there was value in designing intuitive computer interfaces.

      With the emergence and rise of computer-assisted interviewing in the 1990s, researchers began to assess not only the feasibility of computer-based surveys (i.e., how likely it was that the new technology would work), but also their usability (Couper, 2000; Hansen, Fuchs, & Couper, 1997).

      Couper (2000) predicted that usability testing would become a standard questionnaire-pretesting technique. Although usability testing has become significantly more prominent, it has not yet become standard in many organizations. Of those organizations that regularly conduct usability testing, few have documented their process. To become a standard, practitioners must first share their methods and theories, so the field can reach a consensus on best practices. The primary purpose of this book is to fill that gap and present a model for incorporating usability testing as a standard pretesting technique for surveys and to share knowledge about best practices.

      Defining Modern Usability

      The International Organization for Standardization (9241-11, 1988) defines usability in this way:

      The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction, in a specified context of use.

      We start by breaking apart that definition into the five key components.

      1. The product

      2. The specified users of the product

      3. The goals of the users

      4. The context of use

      5. Metrics of evaluation (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction)

      To relate these concepts to a more traditional situation, let us imagine that we will usability-test a desk chair (the product). We would test how well teachers (the specified users in this example) can use the test chair at their desk in the classroom (the context of use). We would give them tasks that are identical to how they normally would use the chair. For example, the teachers’ task might be to sit in the chair and adjust it to their preferred height (the goals of the users). We would measure usability by evaluating (metrics) if and how well they can adjust the height (effectiveness), how quickly they can adjust the height (efficiency), and how satisfied they are with the height they adjusted the chair to

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