Comments on: Citizen Survey from The Chronicle Still Open

By: Andrea

Andrea — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:16:03 +0000

I agree with the frustrations listed above and then some. This survey is unfortunately skewed to reflect the limited and leading answers provided. If you are actually interested in getting a sense of the community’s opinion, you should learn a thing or two about writing an effective survey–otherwise you would be just as accurate if you made up some suvey results to serve the purposes of your story. Here are some resources that can help:

http://www.isr.umich.edu/src/si/courses.html

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survwrit.php

By: Gary Salton

Gary Salton — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:24:36 +0000

Sorry Dave. I started it, got frustrated and quit. Disregarding the radio button and free form questions, there were 8.2 responses to select from per question. That takes a lot of effort. I think your analytical tendencies got the better of you, Dave.

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:51:15 +0000

I decided not to take the survey when I saw that you encouraged people to use a false name and email address. I can’t see how the results could be valid. Some people could “vote” numerous times if they wanted to influence a particular answer. I had similar concerns about the open-ended nature (“it’s done when we say it’s done”) of the survey.