A Literature Review and Taxonomy of In-VR Questionnaire User Interfaces
Saeed Safikhani, Lennart Nacke, Johanna Pirker
TL;DR
This study addresses the problem that traditional questionnaire formats can disrupt VR immersion and bias results. It conducts a PRISMA-guided literature review (2014–2021) of embedded VR questionnaires to develop a two-dimensional taxonomy of in-VR questionnaire UIs and interactions, synthesizing 25 relevant papers. The findings indicate a predominance of 2D UIs with pointer interactions and mostly Likert-style questions, with mixed evidence on presence and break-in-presence effects; a clear, standardized design guideline and broader literature coverage are identified as key gaps. The work delivers a practical taxonomy and discusses implications for UI design, interaction choices, and toolkit development, aiming to improve reliability and adoption of in-VR questionnaires in VR research and education contexts.
Abstract
Previous research demonstrates that the interruption of immersive experiences may lead to a bias in the results of questionnaires. Thus, the traditional way of presenting questionnaires, paper-based or web-based, may not be compatible with evaluating VR experiences. Recent research has shown the positive impact of embedding questionnaires contextually into the virtual environment. However, a comprehensive overview of the available VR questionnaire solutions is currently missing. Furthermore, no clear taxonomy exists for these different solutions in the literature. To address this, we present a literature review of VR questionnaire user interfaces (UI) following PRISMA guidelines. Our search returned 1.109 initial results, which were screened for eligibility, resulting in a corpus of 25 papers. This paper contributes to HCI and games research with a literature review of embedded questionnaires in VR, discussing the advantages and disadvantages and introducing a taxonomy of in-VR questionnaire UIs.