Hi Andrew

My colleague Simon Daniels will be able to tell you. Drop him a note perhaps at .

Kate

Do you have any research showing that your users also don't like dropdowns? It is a usability convention these days - an alternative to it is to split it into three free text boxxes (dd/mm/yyyy) - then test these two against each other.

Hi - as per Colin's comment, good point. I asked Simon for copy of info and this is it (Simon's one of our consultants and our data "Guru"!):

There doesn’t appear to be a great deal of consensus regarding capturing DOB specifically, but here are a few observations. 

• Your instinct to replace the existing drop-down is well placed, as this is a fairly tedious data entry method for users. As a general principal, data capture should always be as intuitive and natural as possible, without requiring users to perform actions that suit the data capture requirements of the collector rather than those of the individual submitting information.  
• Requesting free text obviously has the drawback that dates can be written in a variety of ways and it will be hard or even impossible to stipulate how the date should be entered. Even presenting instructions on-screen, and for instance requesting that the digits be entered with no punctuation, is no guarantee of success, as users will often simply enter the date their own way. Also, entering a date as a string of digits is not natural, which could result in user confusion or simple noncompliance.
• Good validation routines though should be able to interpret and parse dates entered in common formats, such as dd/mm/yy, dd-mm-yyyy etc. (You should also be able to add range validation, so improbably old people and of course those not old enough, can be verified or excluded.) In this way, the user can enter what they like and the system can standardise it. Anything which is entered that the validation routine doesn’t recognise can be presented back for clarification. At this point, more guidance could be offered on entering the date, or even reversion to drop-downs.
• It is crucial though to specify the general order in which the date should be entered i.e. day followed by month then year. The risk otherwise is that individuals internationally (most notably the US) may enter the date in a different order. This is impossible in all cases to validate, as 02/03 could be 2nd March or 3rd Feb.
• As such, presenting the date input as three fields for free text entry may be the best approach. This way it can be made clearer what value is expected in each field, the input can be validated (month can never be >12) and there is no issue with separators. Savvy users will tab between the fields (or you can implement an auto-tab on completion of each field). This is probably the best balance between quick data entry and good collection, although back-end validation will still be crucial.

I hope this is useful. You may also be interested in the (rather short) section on date capture in Graham Rhind’s excellent “Practical International Data Management” - http://www.grcdi.nl/book3.htm

Dear Sirs,

I am researching on a nice way to ask for the date of birth, as it is such a difficult information to capture.
As you were sharing very useful information I was wondering if you would also be able to advice any nice comment/sentence to write when trying to capture date of birth.

Thank you!

Giulia

Hi Kate,

Many thanks for answering. I work with a Charity and we try to get DOB for Marketing purposes, so to do some more targeting and segmentation in the future, but it is not easy to say to people I tried to think to explain this but they might feel that we want to "segregate them" for the age they are.

Thanks!