It was difficult to tell, with all of the attendant sarcasm, and
tongue-in-cheek you used in your post, whether you agreed with my
assertion or not. In any event, all sarcasm aside, using a web
based
research methodology, it really doesn't matter whether all of the
respondants are who you want to talk to, it only matters, how you
screen the responses you use in your analysis and thereby isolate
the ones
you do want. The advantage is that you can change your mind later
about who you want to get information from, without redoing the
research. Please read that part of my message again:
I wrote: "Screening of the respondants by ANY various
criteria can be done AFTER the responses of a survey form are
automatically fed into a Database." (emphasis added)
Usually standard research methods involve a
prescreening interview, often conducted by phone or in person
(e.g.,
in a mall intercept study). Then a formal interview is arranged
or conducted by phone, mail instrument (Survey) or in person. In
a Focus Group Study the respondant usually participates with peers
in a moderated discussion conducted at a specially designed
facility and following a Discussion Guide rather than a
questionaire or survey. Again, in conducting research one usually
must determine IN ADVANCE who you want to talk to and then
carefully screen those individuals prior to executing a research
instrument. It is simply to expensive to interview anyone but
those people. In many cases, however, you decide later that you
would have liked to ask a different population, the same question
(perhaps a different age group or a home owner instead of one
planning to buy). You are then forced to do it all over again at
twice the original cost.
I have been conducting research of various kinds for about 10
years and I am indeed excited about using the web as a research
tool, as are many others evidenced by the number of new surveys
being placed on the web each day. Your aparant lack of
confidence that the people surfing the web are from all walks of
life is wholly unsupportable from the recent data I've seen and
the cross section of users appears to look more like society in
general everyday.
_____________________________________
Loren E. Abraham, AIA, IDSA
Charlottesville, VA
Vc: 804 296 4197 Pg: 804 963 1511 Fax: 804 971 3729
© 1997 Daybreak Technologies Inc. / Environmental Research Group
You wrote:
----------
>From: ETCHISON.GC@EMAIL.PUC.TEXAS.GOV (GC-Etchison, Michael)
> Loren Abraham 3/5 is excited about the Web as a data-gathering
tool.
>Whoa. Extrapolation from Web-users-who-find-your-site to, say,
potential
>home-buyers makes "Dewey Wins" look like "the sun rose this
morning."
>
>Michael Etchison
>
>[opinions mine, not the PUCT's]
__________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by Oikos (www.oikos.com)
and Environmental Building News (www.ebuild.com). For instructions
send e-mail to greenbuilding-request@crest.org.
__________________________________________________________________