Posted by Jay Livingston
The Internet is the great equalizer. It democratizes everything. Anybody can be an op-ed columnist (just get yourself a blog) or a video producer (YouTube). And now, anybody can be a survey researcher, thanks to Ask 500 People .
When you submit a question, Ask sends it out to a random sample of people at various website and tallies the first hundred responses. (I’m puzzled about the number in the site’s name, but it’s still in beta. It's also not clear how it selects the websites.)
Oh I know some nitpicking methodologist will probably complain about non-representative samples and inelegantly worded questions. (That didn’t stop me from looking at the results of several questions and wondering about them as though they were real findings.)
On the other hand, it’s quick and it’s free.
It might be useful in a methods class. When I was in grad school, fellow grad student Michael Schwartz (now at Stony Brook) would give students this assignment: “Design a questionnaire to show . . .” and he would specify some result. Part two of the assignment was: “Design a questionnaire to show just the opposite.” I don’t think Michael actually had his students try out their survey instruments – it would have been something of a chore. But with Ask 500 People, you can have your results in a few hours.
Hat tip to Polly for the link to Ask 500.
1 comment:
wow, this is super cool! question to quant jocks: would it help to ask the same question several times to get multiple samples?
Post a Comment