I have to agree with seesharppress — often, the answer options leave out important possible responses. I also wonder how you’ll handle the choices of “other” — will you just drop that dataset?
Some of the questions are interesting, others are so simplified that it’s difficult to gauge what they’re aiming at. With the question about actions of contemporary feminists, are you referring to FEMEN activists? Emma Watson? Malala? #yesallwomen? When someone chooses an answer for this question, wouldn’t it be important to know what they were thinking of? (For example, FEMEN activists are more likely to offend than, say, Emma Watson.)
The question about the history of feminism is very vague. I think it would work better as a short essay question (which, of course, brings up the problem of a self-selecting sample, as well as sample size).
Have you thought about adding a question that asks responders to select from a list of events or organizations (either asking if they are aware of the events / orgs, or if they consider them “feminist” — you could add some decoy items for fun and to test response reliability…) (NRA, Fox News, etc)
There are other platforms you could use to build a better survey. Have you tried surveymonkey? Google also lets you build surveys (I’ve never tried that one, but one of my students has used it).
Of course you want to keep it short so length doesn’t deter your respondents, so I think the length is good right now.
The survey is on peoples perceptions of feminism. I’ll probably make another survey to cover the Other answers and a third to get more details about what people perceive feminism to be, but it’s not about “this is what I call feminism,” its about “what are your perceptions of feminism.”
Fair enough. Though as long as you don’t know what folks are thinking / talking about when they give you their answers, you are gathering data about the word “feminism” rather than the phenomenon.
The difficulty with the term “Feminism” is that as is often the case when a wrong is addressed, you have a few nut jobs who cast an unfavorable light on the whole group by attempting to go too far in the other direction.
Oh yes as well there are no shortage of people wishing to (over that last century and a half) that would apply the slippery slope fallacy to feminist and the suffragists before them. “Give them some rights and they will take them all!”
Plus many other arguments posed by many different groups. You also have groups like Voice for men who will actively lie and make up quotes whole cloth and attribute them to feminists. Even where there are TURF’s and other radical “feminists” you could point at there is no short of people willing to just make stuff up to make feminists look bad.
There are very real and active forces trying to make feminism look bad, and some are willing to do anything that necessary including rape and death threats.
I would have loved to add comment boxes. In fact, I didn’t even want it to be multiple choice. But I would have had to pay for that privilege.
Do you have any comments on how it could be improved?
Well, yes, and the sample size will undoubtedly be too small, and the respondents will be self-selecting.
But then again, sometimes you just want to get a feel for what some people’s opinions are, not necessarily get a strictly scientifically valid survey. Which is also a valid aim.
hessianwithteeth 
December 29th, 2014 at 10:47 pm
I have to agree with seesharppress — often, the answer options leave out important possible responses. I also wonder how you’ll handle the choices of “other” — will you just drop that dataset?
Some of the questions are interesting, others are so simplified that it’s difficult to gauge what they’re aiming at. With the question about actions of contemporary feminists, are you referring to FEMEN activists? Emma Watson? Malala? #yesallwomen? When someone chooses an answer for this question, wouldn’t it be important to know what they were thinking of? (For example, FEMEN activists are more likely to offend than, say, Emma Watson.)
The question about the history of feminism is very vague. I think it would work better as a short essay question (which, of course, brings up the problem of a self-selecting sample, as well as sample size).
Have you thought about adding a question that asks responders to select from a list of events or organizations (either asking if they are aware of the events / orgs, or if they consider them “feminist” — you could add some decoy items for fun and to test response reliability…) (NRA, Fox News, etc)
There are other platforms you could use to build a better survey. Have you tried surveymonkey? Google also lets you build surveys (I’ve never tried that one, but one of my students has used it).
Of course you want to keep it short so length doesn’t deter your respondents, so I think the length is good right now.
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December 29th, 2014 at 11:29 pm
The survey is on peoples perceptions of feminism. I’ll probably make another survey to cover the Other answers and a third to get more details about what people perceive feminism to be, but it’s not about “this is what I call feminism,” its about “what are your perceptions of feminism.”
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December 30th, 2014 at 11:16 am
Fair enough. Though as long as you don’t know what folks are thinking / talking about when they give you their answers, you are gathering data about the word “feminism” rather than the phenomenon.
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December 29th, 2014 at 8:35 am
Good survey. Balanced questions wih a good response range.
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December 27th, 2014 at 2:17 pm
The difficulty with the term “Feminism” is that as is often the case when a wrong is addressed, you have a few nut jobs who cast an unfavorable light on the whole group by attempting to go too far in the other direction.
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December 27th, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Oh yes as well there are no shortage of people wishing to (over that last century and a half) that would apply the slippery slope fallacy to feminist and the suffragists before them. “Give them some rights and they will take them all!”
Plus many other arguments posed by many different groups. You also have groups like Voice for men who will actively lie and make up quotes whole cloth and attribute them to feminists. Even where there are TURF’s and other radical “feminists” you could point at there is no short of people willing to just make stuff up to make feminists look bad.
There are very real and active forces trying to make feminism look bad, and some are willing to do anything that necessary including rape and death threats.
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December 27th, 2014 at 1:03 pm
I didn’t think it was so useless…I think it is important.
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December 27th, 2014 at 3:05 pm
Thank you 🙂
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December 27th, 2014 at 10:01 am
Completed survey
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December 27th, 2014 at 3:05 pm
Thank you
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December 27th, 2014 at 8:40 am
Reblogged this on Top of JC's Mind and commented:
A survey on feminism from a blog I follow. Please join in if you are so inclined!
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December 27th, 2014 at 4:47 am
The survey questions are simplistic. I checked “other” on most of them for that reason. There aren’t even comment boxes.
Frankly, this survey is next to useless.
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December 27th, 2014 at 3:05 pm
I would have loved to add comment boxes. In fact, I didn’t even want it to be multiple choice. But I would have had to pay for that privilege.
Do you have any comments on how it could be improved?
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December 27th, 2014 at 5:55 pm
Well, yes, and the sample size will undoubtedly be too small, and the respondents will be self-selecting.
But then again, sometimes you just want to get a feel for what some people’s opinions are, not necessarily get a strictly scientifically valid survey. Which is also a valid aim.
So, consider another data point added 🙂
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