Study title

Dit bestand bevat de data die zijn verzameld in het kader van het proefschrift van Sanne Elling: ‘Evaluating website quality: Five studies on user-focused evaluation methods’.Summary:The benefits of evaluating websites among potential users are widely acknowledged. There are several methods that can be used to evaluate the websites’ quality from a users’ perspective. In current practice, many evaluations are executed with inadequate methods that lack research-based validation. This thesis aims to gain more insight into evaluation methodology and to contribute to a higher standard of website evaluation in practice. A first way to evaluate website quality is measuring the users’ opinions. This is often done with questionnaires, which gather opinions in a cheap, fast, and easy way. However, many questionnaires seem to miss a solid statistical basis and a justification of the choice of quality dimensions and questions. We therefore developed the ‘Website Evaluation Questionnaire’ (WEQ), which was specifically designed for the evaluation of governmental websites. In a study in online and laboratory settings the WEQ has proved to be a valid and reliable instrument. A way to gather more specific user opinions, is inviting participants to review website pages. Participants provide their comments by clicking on a feedback button, marking a problematic segment, and formulating their feedback.There has been debate about the extent to which users are able to provide relevant feedback. The results of our studies showed that participants were able to provide useful feedback. They signalled many relevant problems that indeed were experienced by users who needed to find information on the website. Website quality can also be measured during participants’ task performance. A frequently used method is the concurrent think-aloud method (CTA), which involves participants who verbalize their thoughts while performing tasks. There have been doubts on the usefulness and exhaustiveness...