Dale Berger wrote:
> I have a student who would like to collect data using a survey form on the
> internet. He would like to have data collected in a format that can be
> imported easily into SPSS.
Why? Once the data collection process has been contaminated this
thoroughly, by a blatant convenience sample that is just about certain
to introduce heavy respondent selection bias, why bother using SPSS (or
anything else) on the result? Garbage in, garbage out.
Internet users are not a random sample of any other population.
Internet users who browse to a given site are not a random sample of
internet users. And internet users who bother to fill out a form are not
a random sample of anything. Your student will have data representative
of a population whose nature he is just about completely ignorant of,
and which he cannot determine. This is not science, and it is not made
more scientific by using the newest toys to take the "sample".
My only advice is: tell your student that freedom from hard work is not
a basic human right, and that just because doing research well is
sometimes laborious, that is not an excuse to do it badly.
-Robert Dawson
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