I'm curious why you would: a) Think ALA readers don't represent a representative sample of the world's Web designers b) Assume that all 33,000 of the respondents were only ALA readers–do we know how many respondants are regular, occasional, or non-readers of ALA? c) Think there is already a bias at the outset–I'm curious which bias you're speaking of? That they're responding to a survey constructed by ALA, or another bias?
True random sampling for research is realistically non-existent. A goal of good research should be to try and reduce that bias as much as possible, or at least reduce it to an acceptable level. On Oct 20, 2007, at 8:44 AM, Steve Baty wrote: > [...] do ALA readers provide a representative sample of the world's > Web designers the short answer is: almost certainly not. They did > get 33,000 responses (which is a decent number), but doesn't change > the fact that you already have one bias in place at the outset. > > So, the question to ask is: with respect to the questions being > asked, is there any reason to believe ALA readers would answer > differently to non ALA readers. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
