Usability Evaluation
Professor Cox
CIS 375

Abstract
Online surveys are a great alternative to lavish mail or telephone surveys. There are a few requirements to online surveys however that you must be aware of. Using the Internet to conduct quantitative research presents challenges not found in conventional research. Some of our knowledge concerning the effective design and use of paper-based surveys does translate into electronic formats. However, electronic surveys have distinctive technological, demographic and response characteristics that affect how they should be designed, when they can be used and how they can be implemented. Survey design, subject privacy and confidentiality, sampling and subject solicitation, distribution methods and response rates and survey piloting are critical methodological components that must be addressed in order to conduct sound online research.

The easy and difficult aspects of creating and conducting an online questionnaire are a constraint, timeliness, important and the nature of the research requires it. While there are three types of questions have numerous versions. eSurveysPro, for example, offers a dozen different question types based on these three basic types. For example, you can have a multiple choice question that lets the customer choose from a dropdown list, a vertical (up/down) list of choices, or horizontal (left/right) choices. This may seem cosmetic but dropdown lists might delay participation because the customer may not see the question. And a horizontal list of choices might make your survey appear shorter than if the same choices are laid out vertically across the page and under the question.
In addition, the following are other ways to Ensure Valid Responses to an Online Survey are: * Avoid having a huge scrolling survey. Introduce page breaks as necessary. * Refrain from having one question per page, this increases the time to complete the survey as well as increases the chances for "drop outs". * Use attention filters which are trick questions that typically use a large block of text and in the center, it will ask the respondent to answer in a certain way or use skip logic to send anyone who answers incorrectly to the end of the survey. You can also track them and prevent “click throughs” from receiving any reward you offered for responding.
Then there one could use “Trap” Questions, Trap questions are designed to trap individuals who are speeding or cheating as they take the survey. The intent of the questions are obvious and if seen would be answered correctly. However, the questions are placed within a matrix question, thereby making them somewhat difficult for a speeder to spot. These questions are either answered correctly or not, and a speeder will rarely answer all of them correctly.
Examples of Trap questions are easy to design, as show below: * If you live in the U.S. select Strongly Agree (Strongly Disagree – Strongly Agree) * Please answer very unhappy (Very Unhappy – Very Happy) * How happy are you with receiving a very large bill from the IRS (Very Unhappy – Very Happy) timing.
Finally, there are timing questions which have two important uses: timing questions are very helpful in conducting experiments where it is important to track response times. It is also helpful in identifying respondents who speed through a survey, spending only a few second on each page. The timing question is valuable because you can see how long respondents were on a page. This is a powerful tool at your disposal to monitor the quality of your response data.

Assess the reliability of the collected data and include the survey report are very important validity refers to the essential truthfulness of a piece of data. By asserting validity, the researcher is asserting that the data actually measure or reflect the specific phenomenon claimed. Scientific history is full of examples of research findings that were discredited because they were shown to lack validity and reliability to me relates to researchers' claims regarding the accuracy of their data.

Assess the validity of the collected data and include the survey report.

Evaluating the usability of the online questionnaire Website and testing is critical because you should never change your survey once it is put up and advertised. Changing questions in mid-survey will distort your results, creating two surveys. Your goal is to ensure that the results you get the first time are adequate for your needs.

In Conclusion, the quality of your research boils down to the quality of your data. Use any of these 4 methods to ensure you get valid responses for your next online survey and online surveys are a great alternative to lavish mail or telephone surveys. Although there are a few requirements to online surveys you must be aware of using the internet to conduct quantitative research presents challenges not found in conventional research.

Reference

John Wiley & Son (2014) 3rd Edition, Interaction Design http://www.surveysystem.com/reports.htm http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Soc_survey.shtml