Whats the difference between a “finding” and an “observation” as found in the various Eyetrack III reports?
As you read through the reports on this website about Eyetrack III, you’ll notice that some are labeled “findings” and others are “observations.” The distinction between these two is that the “findings” are more rigorous and have been appropriately tested using tightly controlled variables. “Observations” are just that, observations made by the researchers that have not been as vigorously tested.For example, we report “findings” on homepage headline size, because we tested two matching homepages that were different in only one way: One used small headlines, the other used larger headlines. Half of our test group saw one homepage, the other half saw the other page. The single variable allowed us to report “findings” about headline size.For our report on news website advertising, we didn’t use such tightly controlled variables. We tested five website designs, and each design contained different ad types, sizes, and placements. We could observe interesting behaviors of our test subjects a
As you read through the reports on this website about Eyetrack III, you’ll notice that some are labeled “findings” and others are “observations.” The distinction between these two is that the “findings” are more rigorous and have been appropriately tested using tightly controlled variables. “Observations” are just that, observations made by the researchers that have not been as vigorously tested. For example, we report “findings” on homepage headline size, because we tested two matching homepages that were different in only one way: One used small headlines, the other used larger headlines. Half of our test group saw one homepage, the other half saw the other page. The single variable allowed us to report “findings” about headline size. For our report on news website advertising, we didn’t use such tightly controlled variables. We tested five website designs, and each design contained different ad types, sizes, and placements. We could observe interesting behaviors of our test subjects
