Designing a persistent online strategy game - Department of ...

24 Chapter 3. Requirements engineering with non-functional requirements
As seen in Figure 3.10 the rating of the scale is based upon the agreement or disagreement
to the statement.
When designing Likert scales one must first decide which statements should be evaluated.
A good way of doing this is to have a brainstorm session. One also has to decide on
how to phrase the questions, positively or negatively. There is no real consensus on
how this should be done, both entirely negative and positive questionnaires as well as
mixed questionnaires are being used, but it all comes down to the complexity of the
questionnaire. If the questionnaire has both negatively and positively phrased questions
it becomes more complex. Finally one must decide which scale to use. Once again
there is no real consensus on which is best, but 5- and 7-point scales are quite common,
though it is possible to use even numbered scales as well. By doing this the neutral
central point is removed and the participants are thus forced to make a decision.
When the design of the questionnaire is finished it is just a matter of getting participants
to answer it. It is quite common to use small numbers of participants and in these
cases it is quite possible to get everyone to fill out the questionnaire. If however more
participants are required there are a few things to think about to get a good return rate.
The most basic is of course to have a well designed questionnaire, but here follows some
additional tips [52]:
– Provide a short overview section to make sure that at least some information is
returned.
– If the questionnaire has to be returned by mail, include a self-addressed and
stamped envelope.
– Guarantee the anonymity of the participants.
– Explain to what end the questionnaire is being used.
– If possible offer some sort of incentive for participating.
– Consider using some follow-up or reminder.
3.4.2 Interviews
Interviews can be compared to a normal conversation; the only difference is that in
an interview the interviewer has a purpose to gather information from the interviewee.
This is of course quite a crude definition, and how similar an interview is to a regular
conversation depends on how the interview is performed. There are basically four types
of interviews: open-ended (or unstructured), semi-structured, structured and group
interviews [52]. Group interviews will not be discussed here since it is so similar to focus
groups (in fact the terms are often used interchangeably). Structured interviews will
not be discussed in any great detail either since they consist of a set of predetermined
questions very much like a questionnaire. That leaves open-ended and semi-structured
interviews. In an open-ended interview the interviewer asks a question and then lets
the interviewee answer it in any way he/she wishes. The interviewer is then free to
probe for fuller responses. Since both the interviewer and the interviewee can affect and
steer the interview in any direction or take it to any level of detail it can result in a
lot of information that the interviewer have not considered, but of course such rich and