OWASP Communications Survey - Results

Two weeks ago I launched a Google survey to better understand the communication preferences of OWASP members and the OWASP community.  The survey is now closed and here are the results.

Survey Information

• Publicized via leaders email list, OWASP RSS news feed, personal blog (michael-coates.blogspot.com)
• Open for 2 weeks 5/23/2011 - 6/6/2011
• 73 Responses
• No authentication required to complete the survey - results could contain duplicates
• 5 multiple choice questions targeting frequency of using various OWASP communication methods
• 1 question to identify primary method of communication
• 1 question to identify if user has an OWASP.org email account
• 1 free form text box for suggestions

Results

	Primary Method	Often or Occasionally Used
Leaders Email List	34%	78%
RSS News Feed	29%	66%
Local Chapter Email List	21%	79%
OWASP Twitter @OWASP	11%	42%
OWASP Twitter Feed  @OWASP_feed	3%	26%

 

Summary of Responses

Raw data can be found here

Survey Observations

• Email and RSS feeds are the dominant method of information communication
• The primary OWASP twitter account is checked by less than half of the respondents (42%)
• Large majority (75%) of respondents have OWASP.org email accounts. If desired, future surveys could target just OWASP members and require owasp.org email login
• There were multiple comments requesting a forum
• There were multiple comments requesting a more formal OWASP PR department and an "official voice" of OWASP via some channel

My Feedback
The google survey is surprisingly easy to use.  I think this is a very good method of gathering community feedback and we should consider creating more surveys in the future.  Just like with any survey, we have to be very careful on wording on question presentation to minimize influencing the results. Also, I'll get a wiki page setup to capture these survey results and future OWASP surveys.


-Michael Coates - @_mwc