engaging-survey

Topics in the source

• Engaging surveys: excitement in the frame, neutrality in the questions
• The one idea
• Step 1. Name the decisions before touching a question
• Step 2. Set an honest budget
• Step 3. Sharpen the questions you kept
• Step 4. Write the frame (this is where the excitement goes)
• Step 5. Check the platform and the rules before anyone builds it
• Step 6. Pilot it on two or three real respondents

People answer when trust × reward outweighs effort (Dillman's social exchange, as Caroline Jarrett puts it). A survey about something exciting usually fails by being long and dry. The fix is to put the energy in the frame: who is asking, the picture of what this makes possible, what happens next, the thank-you. The questions stay neutral, concrete and quick. An exciting frame with neutral questions gets both enthusiasm and honest data. Loaded or promotional questions get neither (AAPOR: a survey must not be used to sell or to produce a predetermined result). So for every draft you touch, do two separate jobs: cut and sharpen the questions, then write the frame. Don't mix them. The evidence behind each rule, with sources, is in references/evidence.md. Read it when you need to justify a recommendation to the survey's owners; quoting their own field's guidance persuades better than your opinion does. Ask, or infer from the material: what will the owners do differently depending on the answers? Write 3–6 decisions down (e.g. "which working groups to staff first", "which heat variable to prioritise for the first product"). Then go through every question in the draft: Keep it only if you

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