For improving the survey:<p>I don't have the sources (a few hundred papers / articles) anymore, rather this was for my own research in designing surveys for companies garnering feedback from IT Director (mostly) levels.<p>For buy-in, Saliency of Questions and Subject Matter is key to engagement (finishing the survey).<p>Assume that respondents will fade towards the end of the survey. Your most important bits of information that you want to get from respondents should be towards the beginning after a few "warm up" questions, so you get the data you want without the drop-off.<p>Assume each question that is not open ended is ~ 1 minute:1 question. This will help you determine length. Most engagement drops off ~10-15 minutes. These questions INCLUDE Name, email, etc. (also, you may want to drop the name req., as other commenters are pointing out).<p>Surveys of 20 minutes can be very "long" and have a much higher chance of not finishing the survey without interest-engagement (video, graphics, saliency of questions).<p>Research showed that length doesn't necessarily drop engagement, but poor questions (relevance / saliency) does.<p>You will want to tighten up the questions, reduce the # of open-ended questions (how are you going to compare all of those?)<p>You could instead make radio-text boxes (seeing you are using Google Forms), such as: What did you first make the computer do: Option 1,2,3,4,5, Other (as a text line).<p>What language could also be radio-boxes (to shorten respondents time to type).<p>You are also requiring random open-ended questions to be completed (red asterix), or the form will not submit. You will lose much engagement this way.<p>Also note why you are gathering this (I assume for schooling), which would perchance help with privacy concerns (though you don't need anyones real name).
I did not answer this survey, for the following two reasons:<p>- there are a lot of open-ended questions. It's probably very long to fill in.<p>- required full name and email are a showstopper for me. Having a required email is ok of course, but why do you make it required ? And what about the full name ?<p>I believe that lots of people will share these concerns so I hope that it can help you tune your survey so that it's more successful.
You have to scroll all the way to the end before you find out what the copyright terms are: a Creative Commons License that allows commercial use of your replies. The fact that this is a potentially for-profit enterprise should be clearly disclosed before you begin the survey.<p>Here, for convenience, are the license terms:<p><i>By submitting this story you license this work under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US" rel="nofollow">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US</a> </i><p>Which says:<p><pre><code> You are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work
to make commercial use of the work</code></pre>
The survey is very focused on "firsts", like, "what was your first program?". It's weird, would you ask a marathon runner what their first steps were like?<p>A lot of people have dabbled with code, and the first programs are always the same. If you started in the BASIC era like me, it's<p><pre><code> 10 PRINT "NEILK"
20 GOTO 10
</code></pre>
For others it might be making a button in VB or doing some little bit of JavaScript interactivity. My point is, there's no difference between the first program of someone who gives up after thirty seconds, and the first program of someone who sticks with it for thirty years.
I first learned to program in BASIC on an Apple ][+ when I was about 10, but never really followed through with it until I re-taught myself in my 20s, starting with "Learning Perl". So, I wasn't sure how to answer;)
Requiring my full name and cities where I grew up caused me to become wary and leave. That information can be used too easily on stupid sites that have account "security" questions like that.
My first program was in Python. I was in grade 10 and math homework consisted of repetitive questions with the x/y/z changed.<p>I got tired of doing it on the calculator, so I put in the general equations and just updated the variables. It felt good, almost like I had a superpower.
I learned in Stunt Island! Best game ever!<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0YcO25-tKU&noredirect=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0YcO25-tKU&noredirect=1</a>
I actually forgot until recently that C in high school (self-taught) was <i>not</i> the first exposure I had to programming. It was HyperCard! Granted, about five years ago I actually found the original Mac I'd had and discovered I was a truly, truly awful programmer in my first few months, but it did bring back a lot of welcome nostalgia.
I actually enjoyed it. It was the first time I sat down and thought about that journey and I was quite happy to share it. I don't mind about sharing my name or other such information. Never bothered me. I find it easier sharing my real name than trying to come up with a clever username.
Too many personal Q's on the survey... so I laid it out here.<p>On a TRS-80 and the first program I wrote was a Pong knock-off in (GWBasic? can't remember)<p>PEEK & POKE anyone?