Interim Report:

Ru's 9th Annual Anime Fan Questionnaire
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http://www.geocities.com/ruigarashi/Surveys/fans/questionnaire.html

Well, folks, the survey is half-way through its usenet phase,
and as usual I'm posting an interim report.

There have been about 25 returns so far. That is about the
same as the 2004 survey. And yes, that's low, historically
speaking. In 2000, at this point there were twice that, and
in 1998 there were 3 times that. Some of that can be
correlated with a lower posting volume in the rec.arts.anime
newsgroups. I wouldn't doubt the length of the survey has
something to do with it. I know there is a high turnover
rate, as I was seeing about 50%% of the returns were from
folks new to the surveys. Anyway, thanks to all of you who
took the time to fill the survey. To those of you who haven't
done the questionnaire, if you can set aside an hour, give
it a try. If you want to see past survey results, go to
http://www.geocities.com/ruigarashi/Surveys/fans/

The extra comment boxes seem to be working well enough. In
past surveys, a common suggestion was more of these boxes
throughout the survey simply (and understandably) because it
was so hard to remember the comments by the time one got to
the end, or to navigate around while fill out the survey.
Every year I add a few questions (OK, this year it was
a flood), and these comments help me identify the ones that
I screwed up. Questions B27 and B31, for example were
lacking a "one is independent of the other" option. Or
the non-RAA newsgroups question, don't ask me how I managed
to overlook a text box for that. I'm not sure how to address
those at this point. It'll have to wait for next year. Anyway,
sorry for the mistakes, and thanks very much to those that
took the time to comment on them. Hmm, maybe generalize to
"kitchenware"?

The other feature new to this questionnaire are the text
boxes next to the "other" answers. I didn't provide one
for every instance, partly because it didn't seem appropriate,
but also because I wasn't sure this was going to work. Sure
I tested all of my software, but running in production mode
tends to bring out the problems. I've been getting useful
ideas from these, so I'm glad it's been working so far.
There were a few where I thought "ooo, that's a good one".
One thing I've found is that the "anime-related products"
list needs more examples. :) I was warmed to see that
I wasn't the only one to enter drinkware as an "other" in
those same questions. Yes, I realized, after starting, that
in all these years I didn't have "drinkware" EVEN THOUGH
that's something I have looked for in all that time.

After last year's problems, I'm worried that folks may be
running into trouble submitting their returns. If you don't
get a "Thank you for participating" page after submitting,
something has gone wrong. If you can, please let me know
(by email, by posting here...).

Other than that, as usual I'm going to hold off reporting any
results from the survey itself until the end (in 3 weeks).

On a related note, I'm going to post a third notice marking
the end of the usenet phase and the beginning of the web
phase of this survey. That doesn't mean you can't do the
questionnaire, it just means I won't be pushing the survey
at you guys after that. Anyway, that'll be when I ask folks
to spread the word on their favourite anime web site. Please
hold off until then. Thanks.

ru

P.S. I'll be posting the text-only version of the questionnaire
right after this.