From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 11 Mar 2004 - 10:22:18 GMT
Francesca S. Alcorn wrote:
> Chris said:
>
>> Thanks Frankie and Lawry. I must admit I'm surprised to hear that this
>> is not a big area of study, although there is that 'survey survey'
>> problem which is rather thorny.
>
>
> I think you could find quite a bit of info out there. Try googling
> "survey instrument design". Or just "survey design". "Survey design"
> at Amazon gives you quite a few titles.
Yeah. I'm gonna go for it :) I'll be a pro yet.
>
>> I found the idea of just discounting the answers of those who are
>> suspected to be 'cheating' interesting -- kind of like the 'bad day to
>> predict the weather' principle that comes out of complex short term
>> climate models, cos that's all they can manage given the inherent
>> difficulties.
>
>
> Yeah, I thought it was pretty sneaky, probably why it stuck in my head
> all these years.
>
>
>> Just to put it in context; I'm predominantly a data modeller and user
>> reqs gatherer these days, and getting people to (a) be completely
>> honest about how they and others work, and (b) stop saying they're in
>> favour of good things, and against bad things, is a bugger :)
>
>
> Now why on earth would you want people to say that they are against good
> things? :)
>
> Is this something you can fix by using value-neutral language? Or ask
> them what would be the advantages/disadvantages of "A"? Might at least
> help you reframe the questions. Or (trying desperately to bring this
> back to memetics) transplant the idea from one memeplex to another.
Good advice -- that's the kind of thing I do when dealing with eager
developers who want to run with an idea, when I don't want them to :) I
need to try that balanced thing in the wild though -- up till now I've
been using the 'I am an idiot -- knock down my straw man' approach
(which isn't too bad but it's a fine line between 'idiot' and idiot.
> Can you guarantee the anonymity of the respondents?
Almost never, which is a huge issue actually. Something I could try to
address...
Cheers, Chris.
> frankie
>
> ===============================================================
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>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk) MIAPE Project -- psidev.sf.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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