From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2009-11-11T04:30:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Programmers motivation: academic research

On 10.11.2009 15:30, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Nov 10, 2009, at 1:58 AM, Mark Pith wrote:
> 
>> Dear Ruby community,
>>
>> We are researching the motivation factors of Open Source software
>> programmers and would like to ask your cooperation in our large-scale
>> research.
> 
>> Please follow the link to the online survey.
> 
> I took the survey, but this was my final comment:
> 
> This questionnaire is very repetitive.  Questions like "Will working on this project get me a better job?" or "Does working on this project increase my reputation?" are asked many different times in almost the exact same way.
> 
> It would probably be less of a commitment, and as such more programmers would be willing to answer, if you could eliminate the repetition.

I haven't looked at the survey but it is common practice to state the 
same question differently more than once in order to calculate an 
indicator of the consistency of answers.  If consistency falls below a 
certain threshold the result is discarded because it is assumed that the 
person taking the questionnaire either picked random values or did not 
fully concentrate on the survey.

Kind regards

	robert


-- 
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/