Hi,

We are a team from McGill University in Montreal and are doing a
consumer behaviour course where we elaborated a survey for all of us
WHO LOVE OUR PETS. We are seeking help (thru your group) in filling
our survey which should give us an insight on how people go about
acquiring a pet. Here bellow is our link. We greatly appreciate anyone
who helps us by filling it completely.
MANY THANKS
Virgilio Rubini



http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227W2UQJJ5Y

On 2008-06-11 12:17:55 -0400, said:

Hi,

We are a team from McGill University in Montreal and are doing a
consumer behaviour course where we elaborated a survey for all of us
WHO LOVE OUR PETS. We are seeking help (thru your group) in filling
our survey which should give us an insight on how people go about
acquiring a pet. Here bellow is our link. We greatly appreciate anyone
who helps us by filling it completely.
MANY THANKS
Virgilio Rubini



http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227W2UQJJ5Y

The "reluctant to get a pet" section is a perfect example of why you
can't get usable data from your survey.

Lots of improper, leading questions == lots of useless data.

"montana wildhack" wrote in message
news:2008061114342216807-montana@wildhackcominvalid...
On 2008-06-11 12:17:55 -0400, said:

Hi,

We are a team from McGill University in Montreal and are doing a
consumer behaviour course where we elaborated a survey for all of us
WHO LOVE OUR PETS. We are seeking help (thru your group) in filling
our survey which should give us an insight on how people go about
acquiring a pet. Here bellow is our link. We greatly appreciate anyone
who helps us by filling it completely.
MANY THANKS
Virgilio Rubini



http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227W2UQJJ5Y

The "reluctant to get a pet" section is a perfect example of why you can't
get usable data from your survey.

Lots of improper, leading questions == lots of useless data.


I agree. I also didn't like the question about whether or not I consider my
pet a member of the family. If I say "no", does that give them the
information they think it does?

And a follow-up question about how I chose a pet store (if that's where my
pet come from) but none about how I chose the breeder?

Judy

In article ,
Judy wrote:
And a follow-up question about how I chose a pet store (if that's where my
pet come from) but none about how I chose the breeder?

I figure any "survey" that relies on self-selecting
responses from an incredibly non-random choice of subjects
is going to be something short of well-designed in the first
place.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community

"Melinda Shore" wrote in message
...
I figure any "survey" that relies on self-selecting
responses from an incredibly non-random choice of subjects
is going to be something short of well-designed in the first
place.

So does the fault here lie with the course professor? Should there have
been better oversight on the survey design? Or should we assume that the
professor doesn't know any better? Or that after the students put the work
into the poorly planned survey that they professor *then* steps in and tells
them what was wrong with their design and why their results are completely
worthless?

It seems to me that either the professor doesn't know any better or that
because of the lack of oversight the students are set up to do poorly. Or
the professor is trying but the students are refusing to listen.

Regardless, as much as I like to support education and student research,
this survey just isn't worth anyone's time. Taking it only encourages the
students when they should instead be reeled in and refocused in a more
productive direction.

But then, I just spent a week with a whole bunch of undergraduate liberal
arts college professors so I may be a little biased about what a college
education and research are supposed to be.

Judy

In article ,
Judy wrote:
So does the fault here lie with the course professor? Should there have
been better oversight on the survey design? Or should we assume that the
professor doesn't know any better?

I wouldn't assume that, I think. It's a market research
course, and boy, do those people know a lot about research
methodology. There's no way of knowing what the students
were told to do. It may be the case that she knows she's
got crappy sampling, but that they've been told it's okay
for the purpose of the course. I'd be a little surprised if
the survey itself was reviewed by anybody before being
unleashed, although who knows? Maybe she was told what was
wrong with it (mind you, someone could be brilliant at
survey design and still not know that people tend not to get
their pets at pet stores) and was told what kind of biases
to look for in the results. Don't know. But I don't
participate in that kind of thing.

Years ago I did participate in a *long* consumer survey on
cars, but mostly because it came off like a quiz and I enjoy
taking tests quite a bit.

But then, I just spent a week with a whole bunch of undergraduate liberal
arts college professors so I may be a little biased about what a college
education and research are supposed to be.

I expect I share some of those biases. McGill is a good
school with a good graduate program, but the problem here
could be any combination of a bad instructor/professor, a
poor student, an experiment in looking at the consequences
of crappy research design, ...
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community

"Melinda Shore" wrote in message
...
I expect I share some of those biases. McGill is a good
school with a good graduate program, but the problem here
could be any combination of a bad instructor/professor, a
poor student, an experiment in looking at the consequences
of crappy research design, ...

Kind of what I thought. Although your last suggestion concerns me a little.
They've put a fair amount of work into the design just to show it will get
bad results - and how will they know they are bad results?

One of my favorite discussions of the week was about teaching students
critical assessment of facts and statistics. For instance, he (a fish
biology professor) said that he would present the students with the fact
that more fish are caught in lakes that have high concentrations of utility
poles around the edges.

We said "Of course. Greater population density and/or greater
accessibility to the lake itself." He said it's difficult to get some
students to look beyond the immediate conclusion of cause and effect - many
insist that there must be something about the poles themselves that cause
more fish to be caught.

And it gets even worse when he presents completely unrelated "facts".

A couple of my daughter's friends have instituted a similar rule to her
"Mom" grades. If I can reasonably answer a test question based on common
sense and my limited science knowledge, then her upperclassmen lose double
points for getting it wrong. The friends don't call me to pose the question
like she does but they have found similar people in their own lives to do
the same thing.

Judy

In article ,
Judy wrote:
Kind of what I thought. Although your last suggestion concerns me a little.
They've put a fair amount of work into the design just to show it will get
bad results - and how will they know they are bad results?

Well, for all we know there's another student out there
running a survey using better sampling methodology.

Greater population density and/or greater
accessibility to the lake itself." He said it's difficult to get some
students to look beyond the immediate conclusion of cause and effect - many
insist that there must be something about the poles themselves that cause
more fish to be caught.

It's not just students - you can find instances of this (aka
cum hoc ergo propter hoc) all the heck over the place. One
paper that's getting a lot of attention at the moment,
trying to figure out whether or not the author is committing
exactly that error, is discussed he
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2008/06...ns_rights.html

A couple of my daughter's friends have instituted a similar rule to her
"Mom" grades. If I can reasonably answer a test question based on common
sense and my limited science knowledge, then her upperclassmen lose double
points for getting it wrong. The friends don't call me to pose the question
like she does but they have found similar people in their own lives to do
the same thing.

That's pretty funny.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community

wrote:
Hi,

We are a team from McGill University in Montreal and are doing a
consumer behaviour course where we elaborated a survey for all of us
WHO LOVE OUR PETS. We are seeking help (thru your group) in filling
our survey which should give us an insight on how people go about
acquiring a pet. Here bellow is our link. We greatly appreciate anyone
who helps us by filling it completely.
MANY THANKS
Virgilio Rubini



http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227W2UQJJ5Y

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--
~shady angel~