Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Adrien Brochard]

> As a start, lose all of the multiple choices.
> Just have open questions, letting users say
> what they do/use/prefer, etc.
>
> The multiple choices, even with an "other",
> bias the results.

How does it bias results exactly?
There is always a series of trade-off to make when surveying: free text
is more open ended and allows for discovery, but multiple choices have
higher completion rate and give specific answers. The set of questions
is organized such that we have:
- multiple choices regarding factual and technical practices (which
version of Emacs/OS/packages etc)
- open ended question with broader topics and free text
- meta questions about the survey itself

> Ask users to express themselves, then work
> with whatever info they provide for the
> questions.

That's the point of the more open ended questions with free text along
with the general feedback section.