Options for Structuring a User Poll

November 7, 2014 7:53 AM

I'm creating an online poll for work, and have two options for user responses. Will the final tally be radically different if I choose one over the other?

Users are being asked to select their preferred option out of 10 choices. We can restrict users to choosing just one option, or we can allow users to select as many of the 10 as they would like. Would the top choice likely be different depending on how we structure the poll?

Assume a sufficiently large audience / response rate, and only the top vote-getter wins in either scenario.

posted by grateful to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

Best answer: If everyone has a top choice (say, items 1, 3, or 5) but everyone agrees on a second choice (item 2), then item 2 will have the most votes and will win if you allow people to select more than one option.

If they can only select one, then 3 might edge out 1 or 5, but the people who selected 1 or 5 might all hate 3.

You're probably better off going with the first option of letting people select as many as they want - the item to get the most votes may not be anyone's top choice, but it's the one with the best chance of appeasing nearly everyone without sparking conflict. Just make sure the instructions are clear that they should only select options that they find preferable.
posted by trivia genius at 7:59 AM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ahh good point. The top three choices will actually win, so that effect may be somewhat blunted, but yes, I see how the results may vary.
posted by grateful at 8:03 AM on November 7, 2014

Best answer: If it's the top three that will win, you probably want to let people choose at least three things. But I'm with trivia genius -- if people can choose any "acceptable" choice, they won't feel like they have to whittle down their "acceptable" choices.
posted by Etrigan at 8:13 AM on November 7, 2014

Assuming you're using a survey tool sophisticated enough to do this (Surveymonkey, et al), you should make everyone choose three, and rank them in order of desirability - that is, don't just give them checkboxes, but give them drop-downs for First, Second and Third choices. A clear top vote-getter will emerge (you said only one will win).
posted by jbickers at 8:33 AM on November 7, 2014

Best answer: I believe you're taking about the difference between plurality voting and approval voting. I'm not an expert in voting theory so I can't give you a summary of the pros and cons, but this sort of thing had been studied extensively and if you really want to get into it you'll find a wealth of information in the Wikipedia links.
posted by narain at 8:41 AM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

It might be overkill (and $) for this sort of thing, but OpaVote offers many ways of structuring votes.
posted by scruss at 10:11 AM on November 7, 2014