Hello, everyone!

My university course requires me to do a survey on freelancers, so I chose to do one involving the most common issues of doing freelance work. Please spare a few minutes of your time to answer these questions (only 10 of them!). You would help me out a lot. Thanks!

http://pollmill.com/f/freelancing-in-game-development-67uar43/answers/new.fullpage

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UPDATE:

Since the poll has been updated it satisfied all my concerns.

These comments refer to the old poll, not the one visible in the original post any more.

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ORIGINAL:

Started to take your survey, but then realized I cannot.

At least, I cannot submit it and still feel good about the answers I gave because of the choices you are forcing.

Sorry.

Here's some of the reasons why I cannot submit the answers:

Several of your choices are exclusive, but should be multiple choice. For example the bottom question, "Have you ever agreed to..." could be many answers, I have worked for money, for equity and ownership, for reputation, to build my contact network, and for other reasons besides.

Other questions are vague or non-specific, or just nonsensical. How often am I distracted? The only ones of the four that make sense are "never" (seriously?) or "sometimes".

For meeting contract milestone deadlines you gave "more than 50%", "less than 50%", and "Average". If you are not meeting 100% of your deadlines, there is a name for that: breach of contract. It is something you CANNOT do as a contractor if you want to remain a contractor.

"Which of the following is the most frustrating aspect of the work?" None of those.

And so on.

There's an issue with creating meaningful survey and attaining objective results, and the issue lies with the fact that it's very hard to capture objective "choices" that encompass every possibility without feeling like they're guiding (forcefully) the reader in a given direction. Oftentimes, you can tell a survey's value by the answers listed there, and the tone. You can pretty much tell what the creator thinks of a given field and lose respect for them before finishing to answer. I've been in that position oftentimes where I've given up answering a survey not because it was long, but because it was trying to disprove my views, twisting my answers against me in a way only a lawyer would otherwise be able to.

There's a lot of merit to frob's post, and that, alone, should be a valuable lesson learned.

I don't know what your University course is, whether it be related to game dev, or actual data collection (Human Sciences possibly?) but there's value in revising your approach.

For now, I'll refrain to answer this survey as well. Feel free to update this thread should you reconsider your approach.

Thanks, far more tactful answer. I was wondering how to word it, then just gave up and was more brutal than I wanted to be.

There is nothing brutal in your answer. You made some very valid points which are hard to foresee for a first timer in surveys (or maybe I'm just being an idiot, heh). This is the first task of this type that I have ever done. I am not willing to blame my university for it, however, I generally specialize in technical fields and this is a module from the Social Sciences group of modules which is obligatory to complete and we were all just thrown into it without much preparation. However, your criticism is good to have and I thank you for it.

I would like to ask, if I should change certain questions to multiple choice and add the possibility to choose answers like "none of the above" or should I rewrite the whole thing?

Thanks again.

Good question. :-)

What is most frustrating question, perhaps add an open-ended response. None of those are particularly frustrating to me; stability is quickly addressed by networking, not having an office just means reserving space in your house or enjoying pleasant other locations, time management may be hard at times, communications is a personal skill, and contract negotiations are skills that can be taught. Most frustrating for me personally is improper specifications (which are communicated clearly). They clearly specified something they thought they wanted but did not, wasting everybody's time and energy and money.

Setting deadlines accurately question shouldn't be at the 50% accuracy mark. Maybe ask about what makes scheduling difficult for that person, or perhaps if it is meant as a follow-on to the 'most frustrating' question, an open-ended question about why it is the most frustrating. Or perhaps you are trying to find out what is the most difficult aspect of scheduling for the person?

Being distracted question is just weird to me. Everyone gets distracted sometimes. What do you intend to ask with that? Is your real question the follow up, how you do cope with them? If so, just ask the second question.

For finances, there are many other help options other than an accountant. Spouse, extended family, friends, roommates, or non-accountant book-keepers for a few. What are you fishing for? Are you asking if they did it all themselves personally? Are you asking if they did not have the necessary bookkeeping skills in their household? Are you asking if the required bookkeeping is complicated enough to warrant professional help? For me, I don't really focus on the finances, my wife -- who was a math major in college -- absolutely loves the challenges of keeping finances straight. It is a task I am capable of but don't do because she enjoys it, and gets a little upset when I start doing it for her.

Ever agreed to work for... question should be multiple choice. I personally have agreed to work for many things, including all three of those. I've also volunteered worked for charities (such as my state's NAMI chapter and several music organizations), and done work for family at no cost that mostly matched what this chart suggests.

As for what to do with the poll, it probably depends on how many takers you have. I worried I might spoil it with my reply, but also wanted to communicate to you and others about its nature.

If you have few or no responses, maybe just fix up those few things (and any others that people suggest) and re-launch.

I have taken your advice into account and adjusted the poll accordingly. It's better to re-launch with improved questions than to just complete a task for the sake of completing it.

As to the question about finances the aim is to explore the options that people use to manage their income. I fully agree that it should have included more options to begin with.

I edited the original post and added a link to the updated version. I may not receive many answers from here anymore, but at least I will post a better poll to other places.

Thank you for your help!

In the Do you prefer Freelance or blah blah blah. I put Don't Know as the was no option for "No preference".

For meeting contract milestone deadlines you gave "more than 50%", "less than 50%", and "Average". If you are not meeting 100% of your deadlines, there is a name for that: breach of contract. It is something you CANNOT do as a contractor if you want to remain a contractor.

And especially if you didn't set the milestone, there's no guarantee it's achievable in the first place.

I would like to ask, if I should change certain questions to multiple choice and add the possibility to choose answers like "none of the above" or should I rewrite the whole thing?

I actually attended a similar class over a decade ago (ugh!)

In an ideal world, all questions would be open ended, but this causes a lot of data crunching on your part when the sample gets bigger, and some weird cases where data accuracy gets lost. For example, if all but two users say "blue" and the last two say "red" and "orange" can you really afford to say that two users chose "hot" colors? or any similar attempt at abstracting the result to find a tendency as opposed to raw data? Sometimes, too much information means you can't see the bigger picture well enough.

To this end, I recommend the following approach. List statements, and ask the user to say whether they:

1 - Mostly agree

2 - Somewhat agree

3 - Somewhat disagree

4 - Mostly disagree

Note how there's not "true neutral" stance here. There's a known effect where a lot of people will get naturally drawn to the center, and if you add a neutral stance, people that would've answered 2 or 4 in a 1-5 scale will end up choosing 3, but also, most users naturally drawn to 1 and 5 would feel too radical and ease towards 2-4 making it harder for you to get a clear picture.

There's a lot more stuff to know, but I'm afraid I'm not much of an expert and wouldn't want to lead you astray. Based on the current questionnaire, I would open up any question that is too restrictive to the open question status.

Good luck!