----- Forwarded message from Dale Berger -----
Thank you for many useful comments and suggestions regarding on-line
data collection.
Several people expressed concerns about the quality of data collected
on-line, even to the point of categorically denouncing the technique.
On-line surveys certainly have serious limitations, though there may
be some applications where on-line data collection is superior to
other methods.
Consider a survey of recent alumni from a graduate program, where email
addresses are available for all of the potential respondents. I seems to me
that an on-line survey of this population could be better than a mail
survey.
----- End of forwarded message from Dale Berger -----
I was one of the critics. Perhaps I did not make it clear that the
problem is with inference and generalizability. Two of my students
used regular mail to survey alumni of our programs. From such data,
you can say things like, " 23% of those who responded felt that
Calculus was the most useful course they took as part of their
program," and this can indeed be useful information. However, you
cannot make a confidence interval for, nor test a hypothesis about,
the population of ALL alumni. Rather than a random sample you have
multiple anecdotal reports.
_
| | Robert W. Hayden
| | Work: Department of Mathematics
/ | Plymouth State College MSC#29
| | Plymouth, New Hampshire 03264 USA
| * | fax (603) 535-2943
/ | Home: 82 River Street (use this in the summer)
| ) Ashland, NH 03217
L_____/ (603) 968-9914 (use this year-round)
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