Google recently announced the beta test of a new email feature called Mail Goggles. Basically it is a user enacted feature that helps prevent you from sending an email that you may regret later. It is specifically intended for late night emails, when a person may have had a bit too much to drink (or some other form of ingested recreation) to think rationally about what they may write to someone. After all, how many people have made the bad judgment to send a hateful email to an ex-boss or ex boyfriend/girlfriend? Mail Goggles requires you to take a simple math test. If you can’t correctly answer the questions within the allotted amount of time, your email “send” is disabled.
This got me to thinking whether we need a similar tool for survey takers. After all, with online surveys, an individual can take a survey 24/7. So I decided to scan the responses to surveys that are taken in the wee hours of the night. Admittedly this was somewhat unscientific. I didn’t know if a response at 3:00 AM was from a person who had been partying all night, or if it was a person getting home from working the second shift. I checked for logically consistent answers. I also checked that open-ended responses were relatively clear and spelling errors were minimal.
Bottom line, I didn’t see anything that made me think we should question the validity of late night surveys. Also, I didn’t find many surveys that are completed in the wee hours of the morning. So, I don’t think we need survey goggles. But this is one of the many things you have to think about with an online survey. One of the many things that did not exist with telephone surveys.
This got me to thinking whether we need a similar tool for survey takers. After all, with online surveys, an individual can take a survey 24/7. So I decided to scan the responses to surveys that are taken in the wee hours of the night. Admittedly this was somewhat unscientific. I didn’t know if a response at 3:00 AM was from a person who had been partying all night, or if it was a person getting home from working the second shift. I checked for logically consistent answers. I also checked that open-ended responses were relatively clear and spelling errors were minimal.
Bottom line, I didn’t see anything that made me think we should question the validity of late night surveys. Also, I didn’t find many surveys that are completed in the wee hours of the morning. So, I don’t think we need survey goggles. But this is one of the many things you have to think about with an online survey. One of the many things that did not exist with telephone surveys.
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