[IxDA Discuss] Are required field notations really necessary with radio button selections?

[Chauncey Wilson]

Radio buttons (or as they are often called, "option buttons") in the
early days of GUIs were used to select a choice from a set of items
and early style guides noted that one of the radio buttons had to be
chosen. The selection wasn't really "tacit" it was explicit. I noticed
in the mid 1990s that there were radio button designs being used in
online questionnaires (before surveymonkey and the like) where none of
the radio buttons was chosen as early style guides had mandated.  I
think that I first saw it on a medical application where the physician
had to check various items about a patient's health.  The underlying
metaphor had changed here from the physical radio set in old cars
where you always had a station selected (unless your buttons broke) to
that of a questionnaire where a person was required to make a choice,
but you didn't want to preselect a choice to bias the task. So, if you
are following the questionnaire model where you don't prefill a
default radio button (to prevent bias), then putting an asterisk
beside the field is reasonable.  If you have radio buttons where there
a default choice is prefilled, then the asterisk does not seem to make
sense.

Chauncey





On Nov 13, 2007 7:30 PM, Stephen Dondershine <sdondershine at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does one necessarily need to add an asterisk indicating that a selection is
> required for a radio button selection form input?
>
> It seems to me that one can argue two ways:
>
> 1.)  The fact that some item in the radio button group will always be
> selected tacitly implies that the input is required. It is really impossible
> for the User not to mae a selection, so why bother to indicate that it's a
> required field?
>
> 2.)  Nevertheless, the required field asterisk draws the User's attention to
> the field input itself and the fact that there is potentially a decision to
> be made.  It is therefore worth including.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Steve
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