[MikeTV]

Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort.

Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order).

The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the next question had the order of the answers reversed so that Strongly Agree was on bottom. Submitted an opposite sentiment before realizing what happened.

Strikes me as manipulative, like the survey really isn't so much for discovering my opinion as it is for collecting favorable ones. I wonder who will get the results, and to what end?

[Paul-ish]

That's common in surveys. It's to see if you are paying attention.

[MikeTV]

I've noticed that with single-question responses such as Amazon's "why are you returning this" drop-down, and it makes total sense there. A consistently random arrangement means that users picking just the top answer will have no more influence on the overall report than random noise. Makes less sense when available answers are the same for each question, such that the user might have mentally cached them to avoid rereading.

However, n=1. The timing might have been coincidental.