Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons in Web Surveys

Email Article |  Facebook |  Twitter |  LinkedIn 

A survey from one of our customers was recently lampooned in a popular blog about “curious perversions in Information Technology”.

Clearly, the author of the questionnaire didn’t intend to set the validation for question 8 to limit to one choice, given their instructions to the respondent (“please tick all that apply”).  This was simply an honest mistake on their part.

But why should our survey software even allow the author to limit a choose-all-that-apply question to one choice?  If only one choice is permitted, then the system should use radio buttons or a dropdown box.  Early on, in fact, I wanted to make sure that this wasn’t even an option for questionnaire authors, but our customers pushed back that they wanted this functionality, for two reasons:

1. Some users don’t value the difference between radio buttons (shown in question 9, limited to one choice) and checkboxes, a distinction in user interfaces that dates back to at least 1984.  These users like the visual esthetic of the checkboxes better and choose to use checkboxes on all questions, even those where only one choice is permitted.
2. Some users dislike the fact that you cannot unselect a radio button, and prefer to use checkboxes so that a respondent can uncheck a choice if they decide no choice is applicable.

So, while you can certainly use checkboxes in this way, the best practice should be to use radio buttons when you only want the respondent to select a single choice, and to provide a “Not applicable” or “Does not apply” choice on radio-button questions when you want respondents to be able to “unselect” a choice.