Help needed with PhD research to fill in short questionnaire to make Internet Explorer / Mozilla Firefox more usable for older adults

I'm a research student at School of Informatics, University of
Manchester, conducting a research on the development of web browsers
(e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) for elderly people.

Rabbit...

Ageism and insults aside :-) I was willing to give the student the benefit
of the doubt but I'd rather see the whole questionnaire before I decide
whether to go ahead.I don't really want to take the time to fill in 15
different pages to discover at the end that it asks for information I'm not
willing to supply.

Gareth...

I stopped when it asked... "Where do you live?"

If you are 50+, I need you help to fill in my on-line questionnaire at
questionnaire comprises of short 30 questions and will take 6-8 minutes

Tickettyboo...

I filled in your questionnaire. Hope it helps.
I do have some comments to make though.
As Mike said, I think you should have included some reference to the
University to prove your credentials. Also asking for an email address
without giving a statement of how the privacy of that address would be
treated/ ensured means , I suspect ,a lot of people including me will not
provide one.
I have daily contact with a lot of overseas students and admire their
ability to study in a foreign ( to them ) language, but would suggest
that any future projects would benefit from proof reading by a native
English speaker. As you have found, terminology is quite important :-)

to complete.

=?iso-8859-1?Q?=A7ire=DFird?= & $ir Vivor...

Cheek of the child!!

I might be 50+ and I might be a (step)grandmother but I am very
definitely *not* elderly. I'm still several years from drawing an old
age pension too!!!

Elderly in my book starts at around 80 - which effectively excludes
everyone in this group if you want elderly people!! Now if you're

Tickettyboo...

Bet you anything you will replace that book when you get to 70+
Elderly is a relative term, when we are about 5 someone in their 20s is
'really' old, our perceptions change as we grow older.
Me? I am 52 going on about 3 most days lol

Aries...

I agree. At 70 I often let my inner child out to play and great fun it is
too :D

Gareth...

I bet you don't still jump in puddles like I do? :-)

Aries...

wanna bet ;-) ;-)

looking for *older* people, or *mature* people then that's a different
matter.

pandamonium...

Mature? In here?

The only things of maturity in my life are the wines, beers and cheeses I
consume. Oh, and sometimes my socks ;)

Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.

Tickettyboo...

That's okay, good luck with the research :-)

Prush

Ali...

Several times, you didn't have the answer I wanted, or you had radio
buttons where I wanted to choose more than one answer, eg Q19 I use at
least 3 scrolling methods, depending on how far I want to scroll.

Q18 I open windows (or rather tabs) one at a time, but I *have* open at
once as many as I need.

Q5 (I think) I do various things once a month - because that's how often
they need to be done - your questionaire doesn't distinguish between that
and never doing them.

Mike Tullett...

Whilst I'm pretty sure this research is genuine, you really ought to be
posting using your university email address (munged or otherwise). Or at
least have a link on your personal website to a part of the University's
site to prove your credentials.

Mothy...

I wonder what this student thinks of the elderly response to this.

Oxford dictionary definition of elderly is "adj. rather old; past middle
age". So I reckon 50+ is past middle age for most. I'm definitely in
that group by the way. Perhaps I don't take offence so easily.

I think the target group seems reasonable as a lot of people 50+ were
not of the information technology age in their youth. If you take that
starting roughly in the late 70's (it would be a lot later for most)
then the 50+ group would be entering their twenties and beyond so it
doesn't seem unreasonable to target the 50+ group to establish what the
elderly feel and know about web browsers.

The question is does the survey tackle that, well I'm not qualified to
judge as I don't know the terms of reference.

MCC...

English isn't your mother-language is it?

What type of your e-mail platform?

Ergo...

Prush, as a very old man, nearly ancient I thought I would try to help you
out. The first thing that you should do is to make sure your questionnaire
actually works past question 9 if I remember rightly. This seems typical of
shoddy programming found in general use today. If you want to do something
useful, get rid of all of the 'bells & whistles' stuck into these
programmes. I remember many years ago when I had a word processor, database,
comms programme, graphics package all of which sat on a 720 floppy disk.

If you want to improve Browsers, remember KISS.

MCC...

I had that problem, Eric, but it was because I hadn't selected an answer in
the 'Business' part of the question.

Splodge...

Is 50 the new elderly?
Sigh, just going out to buy a blue hair rinse and wrinkly stockings:)))
Splodge

Old Grizzly...

it seems that you are trying to research the problems that "Elderly"
people are having using the Browsers mentioned. So in that regard how
are you going to filter out those possible responses from elderly people
who might have problems answering Questionnaires.
Of course i am one of those elderly people so this response might even
be a load of old twaddle, just a thought.

~~seadancer~~...

I've completed the questionnaire. It was easy to read and
to use. At times it might have been helpful if I had been allowed
to check more than one answer because I'm not always
locked into the same methods. Perhaps you should allow us
to explain our answers a bit, or qualify them in some way.
That way you might improve your next questionnaire.
Good luck in your endeavors, Prush.

sam...

Sorry, prush, the software is flawed.