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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Making a case for Binary Surveys

Do you like this blog?

Isn't that a easier question to answer than a question like "How would you rate my blog on a scale of 0-10?"

Am I not bound to get more truthful and accurate answer with the first question? After all, our minds can easily distinguish whether we like things or not, but it is very difficult to quantify your liking/disliking for something.

If I have 100 people taking a survey and then rating it 0/1, I can still come up with a 0-10 figure in the end by just taking a mean of the answers and multiplying by 10. Would that figure be any less or any more accurate than an average derived from making people give a 0-10 answer?

Feeding a 0-10 answer obtained by averaging 0/1 answers into a larger calculation might still work, but I think the basic inputs should always be binary.