Re: My research about how people in LIS see ID

Dear Liz

Thanks very much for the link, which seems full of good stuff. I  
haven't had a chance to read the whole thing through, but this  
section about the Scottish election ballot design caught my eye:

********************
By way of contrast, another example concerning the design of forms on  
which members of the general public have to enter important  
information. Those who have to provide for such situations should  
proceed with care, and expect trouble. Trouble they certainly got in  
this instance, and it appears that they may not have appreciated the  
nature of the problem.
On 3 May this year, Scottish voters had to register their votes in  
two elections: a General Election for the Scottish Parliament, and  
elections for Scotland’s local authorities. The parliamentary  
election is on the first-past-the-post principle, but voters have to  
give two kinds of votes: one to elect members for individual  
constituencies, and one for a regional list. In the last Scottish  
Parliamentary elections these two lists were presented on separate  
ballot papers; this time they were set out in two columns on a single  
ballot paper – which foxed a lot of voters, and led to 142,000  
rejected votes.

The results as might have been expected were a quite spectacular  
mess. The Scotland director for the Electoral Reform Society said  
cautiously '... it does seem to be something about the way it was  
designed or the instructions that were given.'
A perceptive conclusion, which turned out to be accurate in the light  
of subsequent Strathclyde University research (Carman & Mitchell,  
2007). The authors found that the highest rates of rejection were in  
constituencies where social deprivation was higher and educational  
qualifications lower than average. Further analysis showed that  
ballot design and structure was strongly related to voters’ failure  
to complete the forms correctly. There was distinct statistical  
evidence that number of parties in the regional lists in  
constituencies was a significant predictor of rejected ballots; the  
more of them there were, the less space for the text of instructions  
and for the explanatory graphics. Carman and Mitchell conclude that:  
‘... our research indicates that the different ‘rules’ (or ballot  
design) used in different regions in Scotland had a very clear and  
distinct influence on the number of constituency ballots rejected.’  
and that the effect is strongest in the least affluent  
constituencies. In other words poor design and instructions have  
acted to further disadvantage already disadvantaged electors.

*********************

Casting around on the net I can across a (spectacularly badly  
designed!) Powerpoint presentation about the results for these  
elections on a Strathclyde University website

http://www.scottishelectionstudy.org.uk/presentations.htm

Do you know if there are any better versions of the Scottish  
Parliament ballot forms available? Also, if there are any examples of  
the local elections ballot which were held on the same day. Some  
sources says that this might have led to further confusion in that  
this used the STV system.

I'm teaching a module on Information Design at University College  
Dublin at the moment and could do with some good examples.

thanks a lot

Charles Foster


--------------------------------------
Charles Foster
Tel: 00 353 1 454 8929
email: [email protected]
website: www.charlesfoster.info




On 26 Mar 2010, at 10:41, Liz Orna wrote:

> Carina
>
> Sorry, I gave an inaccurate version of the link. This one should  
> take you direct to the paper in Information Research
>
> http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis02.html
>
> liz
>
>
>
>
> Liz Orna
>
>
>
>
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