Are surveys allowed?

[Kris Strife]

I'm having to do an age group based survey for my Psychology class, and I was wondering if I'd be allowed to start a thread to ask for volunteers?

[Castaras]

Surveys have been done before, so I see no reason why not. :smallsmile:

[Knaight]

That said, we aren't exactly a representative sample of, well, anything.

[Kris Strife]

That said, we aren't exactly a representative sample of, well, anything.

A mix of men and women, ages 18 to 25? :smalltongue:

[Tirian]

Whether it is an unbiased sample or not will be something that you'd need to investigate.

From what I've seen, posts describing the survey and asking for volunteers to contact you through PM or email is tolerated. Conducting the surveys themselves through a thread starts to drift into Minor Spam, since there isn't any discussion promoted in a stream of people answering fixed questions.

[Kris Strife]

Whether it is an unbiased sample or not will be something that you'd need to investigate.

From what I've seen, posts describing the survey and asking for volunteers to contact you through PM or email is tolerated. Conducting the surveys themselves through a thread starts to drift into Minor Spam, since there isn't any discussion promoted in a stream of people answering fixed questions.

I'd obviously be asking for the responses via e-mail, and the question is "What are the top five things that make you happy?" Not making that up.

[Savannah]

That said, we aren't exactly a representative sample of, well, anything.

To be fair, a large number of psychological studies are really studies of self-selected psychology students who want extra credit/money. Self-selected geeky forum-goers isn't any more unrepresentative of the population as a whole :smalltongue:

[Knaight]

To be fair, a large number of psychological studies are really studies of self-selected psychology students who want extra credit/money. Self-selected geeky forum-goers isn't any more unrepresentative of the population as a whole :smalltongue:

True, particularly if some questions are avoided. "What is your favorite game" or "What is your favorite web comic", for instance. I suspect there might be some slight deviation in those. :smallwink:

[Tirian]

To be fair, a large number of psychological studies are really studies of self-selected psychology students who want extra credit/money. Self-selected geeky forum-goers isn't any more unrepresentative of the population as a whole :smalltongue:

Huh. When I was an undergrad, it was an course requirement of Psych 101 to participate in, IIRC, too many of these studies. :smallwink: So the studies our psych majors were performing were at least spread out among every freshman and sophomore in the humanities college and nearly all freshmen and sophomores in the entire university.

I guess I've always figured that selection bias doesn't matter much for undergrad projects (as long as they can competently describe it) because the student is pretty much just going through the exercise for practice. If the result is sufficiently intriguing, the experiment can always be repeated with greater care.

[Kris Strife]

Waiting on a Mod to respond.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

To be fair, a large number of psychological studies are really studies of self-selected psychology students who want extra credit/money. Self-selected geeky forum-goers isn't any more unrepresentative of the population as a whole :smalltongue:
Well this assumes we are the only place being selected from.

And I will point out that due to the requirements of consent, most surveys will have the self-selection problem, whatever the base population. No avoiding that.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: There's nothing inherently violative of the rules about a survey. If we get overwhelmed with surveys, we'll shut them down as an administrative manner. But an individual survey by an existing member seems fine.

If a survey seems to be a spammy attempt to collect email addresses, that doesn't bode well for the surveyor/spammer. And, as noted above, this is a discussion forum, so unless there is actual discussion going on, the thread itself is likely to get locked.