As with most survey data, the results only tell part of the story of what users want and need. Reading through past surveys I have conducted in libraries, and the literature reporting survey results, I am struck by how much information on user needs is not there. This is not merely a problem of writing decent questions and testing them on a sample. It is a function of the complexity of what we or they mean by user needs. One solution to this problem has been to get much closer to users and to study what users actually do, and discover user needs in field data.
Surveys are by definition retrospective.
As the literature on retrospective reports shows, people do not have good memories of processes they have engaged in in the past, near or distant. Thus, surveys as a method for determining user needs are inherently weak. Concurrent reports provide grounded, situated information about user needs and reveal user needs in process. If one is with the user while they are working, one is able to ask deeper questions to fill-in information that is necessarily missing in survey data. These spontaneous reports of users are very informative and can be used to make grounded management and service decisions.