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What you said! Results of the Penn Printout reader survey

February's reader survey asked what you liked and didn't like about Penn Printout and how we could make it more useful. Here's what we learned.

Your time is valuable

We relied on reader volunteers to return surveys. We should have offered an incentive - say, a prize drawing. There were 150 surveys returned, or about 1.7 percent of our direct-mail circulation. To be confident that the survey answers were statistically representative of the entire readership, we'd need more like a 5 percent return rate. So the results that follow show themes and tendencies, not predictive generalizations. But you told us a lot, especially on the "essay" questions. It's like having 150 interviews with our readers.

You're practical

Consistent with past surveys, you rated how-to articles most highly, followed closely by pieces on Penn's specific computing environment and the ever-popular Random Bits and Q&A. Over 80 percent of respondents, however, emphasized that they found the mixture of article types in one publication to be one of Penn Printout's most useful features.

You're not all gearheads

Some of you thought our articles were written too technically; others thought they were too elementary. About 60 percent thought they were about right. "Maybe you can box off a section for a certain technical article," said one of you, "and call it 'More details for neophytes' or 'Advanced techniques'" for those who want information at a different level of complexity. Good idea - we'll be trying it.

Your reading habits vary

Most of you read Penn Printout in its printed form; three-fourths of respondents have never used PennInfo to view Penn Printout articles. Over 80 percent find the formatted hard copy version useful to have. Two-thirds often keep issues for later reference. A small but adamant minority was critical of paper distribution and assumed that it was expensive. "Too nice...!" they said. "Spend more on content delivered electronically and less on layout and production." Electronic distribution will be increasingly important to us (see "Acrobatic NetWWWork" for details). Be reassured, however, that commercial printing is very much cheaper, for an audience as large as ours, than local laser printing - both per page and in the aggregate.

Medium is message

More than two-thirds of respondents found the design "very helpful" in finding information in an issue. That's our goal, along with making what can be pretty dry material easier to assimilate. Although things get a little crazy around deadline time, the whole layout and production process takes only a small fraction - less than 10 percent - of the staff time involved in each issue. Most of the work goes into selecting topics, working with authors to produce lively, informative copy, and seeing articles through technical and policy reviews to assure you of accurate facts. We work to keep our "user interface" cost-effective, though some of you want more: "More photos"; "Four-color printing to make it more eye-appealing and more easily read."

We hear you -- thanks!

In summary, respondents want personal relevance and utility, synthesis of concepts, information not covered in the trade press, Penn-specific technical details, and reports on who's doing what with technology at Penn. We have already begun adjusting our story balance to better reflect your practical priorities. We are also trying out some of the many specific suggestions you made that we don't have room to report on here. Look for some experimentation, but we'll still be recognizable. When asked what we could do to improve Penn Printout, your two most frequent replies were "more of the same!" and "make it happen more often." We'll do our best.