Survey Results Link

[j4ckmchugh]

If you took the survey I posted a few weeks ago you may be interested to see some of the overall results in visual form.
Just go to the link below and please let me know your thoughts on these aggregate results.
Do you think they give an accurate picture of family historians?
Are you surprised by any of the results in particular?

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-DTLT5TBZ/

Best wishes,
Jack

[iluleah]

Do you think they give an accurate picture of family historians?

No, but it gives an accurate picture from the limited questions asked

Are you surprised by any of the results in particular?

No

Surveys ask questions to get the results the person/company asking wants/needs and as you said before you are not interested in FH content, but technology and FH researchers are interested in images/scanned documents first and ease of use is secondary.

[Girl Guide]

Hhmm well I wouldn't say that the survey gives an accurate picture as the questions asked were very basic and didn't go into any great detail.

I didn't see anything in the results that surprised me in any way.

I got the impression that you were more interested in how the websites were arranged/designed.  Family historians are going to be more interested in the information that can be extracted from the websites.  Which is why Q7 had Census, BMD, Newspapers and Military as the top answers.

Whatever survey is being done is going to have questions geared towards getting the answers the survey setter is looking for.

[StevieSteve]

The 70% that regularly use the National Archives and who are members of an offline FHS suggests you've got responses from more experienced researchers. I think it was only after 18 months that I felt I needed to get off my butt and look at something.

And if you look say at the posters on the first page of threads on this site, I'll bet that the percentage of FHS members will be nowhere near 70%

EDIT: Blimey,  a degree in Stats and I can't read a Yes/No graph properly

60% of regular Scotland's People users also suggests a Scottish bias to my mind

[Jomot]

I think it gives a very narrow & simplified picture of UK family historians in that most use / have used the major online sites, and that the most frequently found information is that which is most frequently available or likely to apply !

I too got the impression that you were more interested in the design of the websites so was expecting more specific questions about the functionality of the search options. 

If I'm honest, based on the questions you asked I'm not entirely clear what you were trying to establish from the survey.

[iluleah]

I think it gives a very narrow & simplified picture of UK family historians in that most use / have used the major online sites, and that the most frequently found information is that which is most frequently available or likely to apply !

I too got the impression that you were more interested in the design of the websites so was expecting more specific questions about the functionality of the search options. 

If I'm honest, based on the questions you asked I'm not entirely clear what you were trying to establish from the survey.

Your are correct  and Jack already stated previously

I am a UX design student so, in terms of my own specialism, I am mainly looking at these sites from a web design point of view. Although context is important UX design is not primarily concerned with content but with design of the web furniture such as menus, search, navigation etc.

Which is not really a survey about 'family history' or family historians...... it is a software design survey and maybe better aimed directly at software designers and/or asking for newbies starting to 'research' and think online is the only way you can do that ....... what is important to FH is REAL research work and that means real records, it means record offices and archives.

For me.....SP comes high on the list for family historians as it shows images of records, I find the website can be hard to navigate and find what you are looking for as I am not a regular on SP ( and only thanks to other more experienced SPers on rootchat who found what I was looking for easily) ...so the 'survey results' ask one question but Jack is asking the question for one purpose and the people answering it is for another purpose

[Ruskie]

Thanks for sharing the results with us. I think they are as most of us would expect - but that's probably not a bad thing.

Good luck in your future career.