Quick questionnaire?!

Having spent some years in the advertising industry I know that most businesses hire and leave the marketing arrangements to those companies that are specialist. Even then I can remember the company I worked for resorting to buying market population trends for £150,000 from another marketing company. The Client was pushing for immediate information and so we trusted the other company.....wrong!! The trend information was out of date, useless and valueless. Marketing "intelligence" or information is sold daily between companies and a lot of it is complete rubbish with companies bending the information to suit their purpose. When you buy from a Supermarket, shop, or the Net using a debit or credit card, that information is stored; used and sold globally to companies interested in what you buy. Even the Local Councils are prone to selling your personal information to private companies to swell their coffers. But all of that gathering and storing doesn't make the information accurate.
I think my point here is that Students are not specialists or experts in raising and compiling Surveys. Students have to start somewhere initially when first submitting a survey and, if the Student does not get any help or advice, then taking the first step can be a bit naive but also, to me, takes courage. I know I would have, and have, spent hours of careful consideration in compiling a survey, and after all that have had someone question the viability of the survey. If you give it some thought you too would be hesitant about compiling one, knowing that someone some where would be critical of what you thought was a good survey from your efforts.
As I said earlier we've all suffered from questionnaires and surveys sent by companies, local authorities, had people knocking on the door with marketing surveys asking questions that seemed innocuous, strange, and personal and seemingly pointless and badly put together. How many times have you read in the newspapers and seen on TV where a large organisation has got something completely wrong after supposedly getting public opinions via a marketing survey.
Perhaps we need a survey on the subject.

 

Again, I agree with you, Clueless, although I think Rich might be sucking in his breath as he probably did spend a fair amount of time and thought putting the survey together.
University or not, if we assume that this is Rich's first attempt at a survey to gather information for his project, then I, personally, don't think it was a bad attempt. We all have different ways in approaching a subject and if you take, for example, your "fish and chip" Survey, I would bet that if different members of GC did a survey on that subject they would approach and ask the questions in such a way that somebody would criticise it.
"Criticism is good for the soul" one of my Mentors once told me and if given in a sensitive way, with the intention of improving the originators abilities, then I would agree. But the critic has to be aware that his/her opinion have to take in the possibility that the subject was researched and that the survey questions did adequately cover the information and extract the information required by the originator despite it not being in a format agreeable to the critic. If a huge commercial organisation or Local Authority can get the compilation of a survey completely wrong, then I think a Student can be forgiven for innocuous questions or a seemlngly inadequate survey, especially if they learn from it.

 

Of course, the thing here is that you are all correct (I get a sore bum from sitting on the fence ) and to know the purpose of the survey would affect the result.

As Bertrand Russell said " The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself."

I'm on a panel that fills in professionally compiled surveys where we know the purpose of the survey. They still end up with some ambiguous questions but they always ask for feedback and allow space for us to qualify, and quantify, our answers.

Rich, don't be put off by any of our criticism. It meant to assist and not to hamper.

 

I'm thinking that after his first post he'll only be viewing the survey.