Currently, in version 6 of the Quiz, after you answer all the issue questions, you are asked to rate the importance of each issue on a 1 to 5 scale. Furthermore, you cannot see your results until after you do the rating. When I do test runs of the Quiz, I find answering all these a bit tedious. But my perspective is not a user’s perspective.
How does this feel to those of you taking the Quiz for the first time? Is this a useful input of your opinion? Or do you feel the issues are equally important more or less? For the next edition of the Quiz, should I:
- Keep the importance question as is?
- Keep it, but default all the answers to 3, so users who wish to skip over it can?
- Get rid of this question?
Please respond in the comments. Thank you.
It definitely did seem a bit tedious for all the people I recommended the quiz to.
Unless the input to that section actually affects the resulting score, I think you should just scrap it altogether, or replace it with a 1-3 scale.
It does affect the resulting score. I use a weighted average to generate the scores for each dimension.
Years ago the late Ron Crickenberger questioned the usefulness of the quiz results. According to my results, legalizing prostitution was the most popular libertarian issue. (Still is.) Ron pointed out that people may agree with liberarians on that issue, but the issue is unimportant. A quiz that gets people to weight the importance of issues would give better guidance.
Well the Quiz is no longer a Libertarian Party tool, per se. But I still like the idea of generating interesting stats for any party or movement which wants to use them.
In that case, I think it might still be useful. A 1-3 scale might be better if you have more than a dozen questions because otherwise a 1-5 for every question might make it a bit time consuming, but I can’t say for sure.
I definitely agree though that you should keep the importance ranking if it affects the score – there are just to many people who consider themselves to be Libertarians but only pay lip service to some issues.
This is especially the case with the growing wave of “conservatarians” who have some level of support for drug legalization or ending FCC censorship of offensive material, but don’t do much of anything to end or reduce it.
You should definitely keep it on a one to five scale. I’ve found it useful. Plus when you’re uncertain of say your opinion on trade, then by making it a one you’re less likely to mess with your score. In addition two reflects a lack of need, three contentment with current policies, four of high importance, but a politicians position on a level five would decide if I vote for them