106
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
The first thing is to ask if this absolutely necessary within your system?
If you don't need to ask for a gender then don't.
Modern understanding of what gender means is incredibly complicated (...
- 13.4k
94
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
I recommend matching the order in which your options are presented in the list. You decided to put them in alphabetically (or so it seems), and I see no reason to change the order in the question.
- 2,236
79
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
For user-friendliness, the choices should be listed in the same order they are presented in the question. If you ask "Are you male or female?" then A should be male and B should be female. I would ...
- 761
76
votes
Accepted
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
tl;dr: No matter what you do, you will be in good company. Purely as far as order goes male-first seems to be the traditional preference and seems to match linguistic expectations of most users. ...
- 3,304
57
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
Before proceeding further, I would recommend reading the guidance on collecting data on sex and gender (PDF) to ensure you act both legally and ethically. Depending on the laws in your country, you ...
- 70.7k
52
votes
Accepted
Yes and No questions - Are a "checkmark" and an "X" icon not neutral enough?
The problem with icons is that they can mean different things to different users. In this instance they could be confused with "pass" and "fail" as that is essentially what the ...
- 6,971
38
votes
Accepted
Is it a good idea to replace "other" with "let me tell you"?
The choice "Other" is a very neutral and well-established term which most people quickly understand. If I saw "Let me tell you why:" as an option then I would have to think twice about what it implies....
- 5,619
34
votes
How to best avoid confirmation bias when surveying about features?
Instead of surveying for a particular feature, ask about the pain point the feature should solve.
A great question would be something like "What is the worst thing about our app?" And then give three ...
34
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
Randall Munroe from the xkcd blog has a different approach:
Do you have a Y chromosome?
Don’t Know/Yes/No.
If unsure, select “Yes” if you are physically male and “No” if you are physically female. If ...
- 880
31
votes
How to best avoid confirmation bias when surveying about features?
You could always try asking your users to prioritize a list of 5 or 6 features - That way you're not asking "would you like to have X?" but "Which is more important to you U, V, W, X, Y, or Z?"
There'...
- 13.4k
24
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
I think it'd make the most sense to order it by the most likely expected response. Similar to putting "United States" first in a list of countries on an primarily USA-based app, there's nothing wrong ...
- 251
24
votes
Yes and No questions - Are a "checkmark" and an "X" icon not neutral enough?
Thank you for your answers and valuable feedback. In the end, I moved on with radio buttons and regular text as suggested above.
- 943
18
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
I assume you want to avoid the word "sex" and limiting gender to only two options may seem offensive to some.
Nevertheless, coming back to your original question, I'd opt for the fist choice, "Are ...
- 3,115
17
votes
How do I design a user friendly survey with more than 150 questions?
Had to deal w/a similar issue last year.
Our task, which we couldn't change, was to convert an 11-section, 120-question "learning style" survey PDF into an interactive quiz. The original PDF is a ...
- 1,435
16
votes
Accepted
Survey Confirmation - Emphasize the question or the answer?
Interesting question!
Options #1 for both screens.
I think there are a few points here:
Consistency. You don't want to cause a sudden flip between the two screens and confuse the users or make them ...
- 1,143
14
votes
Is it a good idea to replace "other" with "let me tell you"?
I wouldn't do this for one simple reason: it might become an outlet for your customer's emotions. An 'other' box stays within the rational spheres; as a user you're being asked for a reason, you're ...
- 9,731
12
votes
Accepted
Is it a good practice to have short survey on home page?
Generally no.
Consider what the purpose is of a survey, what value is it actually bringing to the end user? When are they going to hit the survey in their buying process? It's totally putting the ...
- 163
11
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
Take a look at this article https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-behind-behavior/201609/how-should-market-researchers-ask-about-gender-in-surveys since it has interesting information about ...
- 1,703
11
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
To answer the direct question, I prefer "male" before "female" as a user.
tl;dr reasons:
It's more euphonic.
It's conventional.
Efficiency is not sacrificed for either user case.
As I am reading ...
- 209
8
votes
Accepted
How do I design a user friendly survey with more than 150 questions?
Shorter survey will equal more completions. Since shortening the length is out of your influence, the following considerations will make it more likely to be completed.
they are predicated on BJ Fogg'...
- 4,734
8
votes
Accepted
Trouble creating surveys with iOS elements
I guess it depends who is filling up that survey. If I was designing it for some enterprise solution or for beta testers of my app, I would make it condense and simple without focus on UI/UX, but if I'...
- 250
8
votes
Accepted
Yes/No question with an explicit "N/A" option
Could you present the N/A option in the same input style but visually offset or slightly backgrounded from the foreground options.
For example
- 70.7k
7
votes
How should Likert scale options be ordered?
Data and research make me believe that:
Apple's choice to order values from 5 to 1 is a) intentional and
b) evidence-based (references below);
Apple is adopting this structure to increase the value ...
- 2,322
7
votes
How should Likert scale options be ordered?
I think this would then go against Jakob's law of Internet User Experience. Which would indeed make this negative UX. To expand on this further, I have stated that consumers are accustomed to ...
- 898
7
votes
Detect when user leaves a site
Imagine you were shopping and whenever you tried to leave a store, one of the sales people blocked your way until you had told them that you weren't interested in what the store had to offer and were ...
- 67.6k
7
votes
Alternatives to System Usability Scale (SUS)
Jim Lewis wrote an article in 2012 for Measuring Usability
The article explains the direct correlation found between SUS scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). They found that it was possible to ...
- 407
7
votes
Accepted
Best way to ask a question about a mostly subconscious behavior?
If at all possible I'd try and observe actual behaviour, rather than ask a question. Because people suck at predicting their own behaviour.
For example run a remote usability test with mocked up a ...
- 10.3k
7
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
Make the page choose a random number in JavaScript. If it's even, display the female choice first; if it's odd, display the male choice first. Also, the query text should be in the same order as the ...
- 207
7
votes
Order of "female" and "male" in survey form
You should not worry about placing them in any particular order. Just toss a coin and place them randomly (at design time; doing so per each page reload makes little sense). Why?
Because being ...
- 195
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible