[SciPy-Dev] Documentation: user survey

[Joshua Wilson]

One small thing which you can ignore if desired: in the “How do you browse the documentation” question it might make sense to split the “online HTML documentation option” into mobile and non-mobile variants.

> On Sep 18, 2019, at 01:57, Maja Gwozdz <maja.gwozdz.mkg33 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ralf,
> 
> thanks for your comments, I've adjusted the survey accordingly. 
> 
> I've decided to phrase the 'experience question' in terms of levels, i.e., beginner, intermediate, etc., due to the fact that 'years of experience' is probably a more difficult question to answer (at least for me). 
> 
> As for the linear scale, I now modified it and made it a standard 5-point Likert scale. The reason I initially opted for a 3-point scale was to avoid centre tendency bias that might crop up in its 5-point counterpart. But I don't think it's a big deal. You're right, a 5-point scale is more likely to give us fewer neutral responses, which is good for our purposes. 
> 
> I've also discarded the uppercase response options because they looked ugly, stylistically speaking. In order to facilitate a quicker response, I rearranged the response options in 'what features could be improved/added' alphabetically. 
> 
> I've also included the other questions you proposed and those kindly suggested by one other person on the mailing list. 
> 
> If there are no objections / further comments from the Community, I'll start publishing the user survey in the appropriate places (say, in two days). 
> 
> One more important question: should we limit the number of responses to one? This would require signing in, which is less than optimal. Do we have any legitimate concerns about getting spam? 
> 
> You can see the new version here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBAO0UFKDZyKpg2XzRslsLJVHU61ugjc18-2PVEabTQg2_6g/viewform?usp=sf_link.
> 
> I also took the liberty of including a header with a scientific flavour (no copyright infringement here, it's taken from the generic Google headers). 
> 
> All the best,
> Maja
> 
>> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 7:21 AM Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> HI Maja,
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 12:14 PM Maja Gwozdz <maja.gwozdz.mkg33 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> 
>>> I'm currently working on improving the SciPy documentation during the Google Season of Docs. One of my projects is about a user survey. The basic idea is to get (documentation) feedback from SciPy users and try to improve our docs accordingly. 
>>> 
>>> It'd be great if you could take a look at the survey form and say if you have any comments that could help me. You can access it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBAO0UFKDZyKpg2XzRslsLJVHU61ugjc18-2PVEabTQg2_6g/viewform?usp=sf_link
>> 
>> This looks like a very good start. A few thoughts:
>> 
>> In the description at the top of the survey, perhaps add a link to http://scipy.github.io/devdocs/?
>> 
>> It would be good to get some info on the users answering the questions. E.g. beginner/imtermediate/advanced or years of experience. That way you can analyze the other answers better, for example if only 10% of respondents are beginners and they all say that tutorials need improving, that's 100% of beginners that need this.
>> 
>> I'm not a survey design expert, but I think it's more common to have 5 options for the "are you satisfied" or "is this clear" type of questions. With 3, you may get a lot of "neutral" responses.
>> 
>> To "which doc features need to be improved/added" you could add "Ease of navigation".
>> 
>> A question I would find interesting is "how do you view the docs (check all that apply)". Possible answers: online html docs, pdf, view docstring in terminal, Help feature in an IDE, Other.
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Also, I'm compiling a list of websites where I could deploy the survey to get a fair amount of responses. If you know any such websites, please let me know. 
>> 
>> When you say deploy I'm thinking SurveyMonkey or the like - you need just one of those, the Google Form you have may be perfectly fine. Response rates should be mostly determined by where we publicize the request for people to participate (or maybe that's what you meant). To mind come: mailing lists (SciPy and other projects, PyData, NumFOCUS), Twitter, post it on scipy.org, the scipy IRC and numpy Gitter channels, and a blog post that shows up on Planet SciPy and Planet Python.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Ralf
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Your help is much appreciated!
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> Maja Gwozdz
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