Guide to effective network survey design by Terry Murphy

Terry Murphy has written an outstanding (and sobering) assessment of online network survey tools. He has very kindly allowed me to post his report. The abstract is below:

This research report takes questionnaire usability best practice and online usability in a questionnaire context as the basis for developing usability guidelines for social network analysts who choose to employ online modes of data acquisition.

Highlighting the distinct character of network analysis questionnaires, and the opportunities, and potential cost efficiencies, of acquiring network analysis data through online networks, the relationship between usability and communication in the context of questionnaires, particularly the importance of visual design, is considered.

The report provides eleven usability guidelines for online network analysis questionnaires ranging from the general to the network-analysis specific.

The guidelines are not new or revolutionary, but rather provide a network analysis-specific overlay to general online questionnaire guidelines.

Three freely-available, low-cost online survey applications are assessed against the guidelines.

You can get the full report here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2007 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.