...to higher education. I got an email:
Dear John, Dusty, and Bill,
I am writing you in the hopes that you might be able to help me with a research study I am conducting as part of my research training in psychology at New York University. I would be very grateful to you if you could possibly post to your blog the link to a Web survey I am conducting as part of this study. I detail the research question we are trying to address below, but I would first like to assure you up front that this is not to sell anything, make a profit, or promote any sort of political agenda. What we are doing is conducting what we think is rather ground-breaking scientific research in the hopes of better understanding voting behavior from a psychological perspective.
The survey we are conducting is not aimed at changing respondents' opinions in any way, and this study is not being funded by any interest group or any of the candidates - rather, funding comes from a National Science Foundation grant for social psychological research.
Along with a team of students headed by Professor Yaacov Trope (NYU faculty), I am working on a model that will hopefully help us understand...
[big chunk deleted by request].
I would be more than happy to answer any questions about this research or provide references if you are interested in learning more about what we are doing.
Again, I would immensely appreciate your help with our project. The only thing you would have to do is post the URL in your blog (hopefully in the near future, as we are interested in how people reason about the four candidates, while at least 2 out of 4 are still competing for a party nomination). Also, I would ask you to please block any comments on the posting of the survey. I realize that this is a bit of a pain, but it is a necessary precaution we have to take in order to avoid the bias that is likely to result when new respondents see comments about the survey before taking it. [Emphasis mine] On a related note, the research hypothesis described above should not be included in the posting [that big deleted chunk], since knowing the hypothesis also creates unwanted effects in the data. I hope that this does not deter you from posting the survey, which should be easy to do and would really help us recruit some politically savvy respondents, which we badly need!
Here's the link to the Survey.
There's more below the fold in the Flash Traffic/Extended Entry.
I actually got this note last week. I went and took the survey... and, um, well, let's just say I've been paid to develop surveys and this one needed some work (mostly technical issues, but some substantive) and I provided some, uh, feedback, because I wasn't going to link to it and waste your time if the thing was broken.
The feedback (multiple iterations of it) was received graciously, and some methodological approaches were defended, some changed. But I think the thing is ready for prime time, given all the problems inherent in self-selection in internet-based surveys... My last note to the survey team went thusly:
Lastly - what do graduate TAs get paid at NYU? I think I'm owed some pro-rata for being your survey proofer... and you don't want to pay me at the rate my clients do, I assure you... 8^ )
To which I got this response:
Hi John,If I had my own research funds to disburse, I would invest it immediately in your survey proofing! This is really a good lesson in taking the time to make sure everything is polished (especially when there are 16 versions for order counterbalancing) instead of assuming that everyone involved is paying attention to all the details all the time. This importance label mistake cost us 85 observations, and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before.
Ah well, no charge, then.
And remember - comments are turned off at the surveyor's request.
