Sunday, February 1, 2015

Survey Compensation

As an undergraduate in research-intensive institution, I get lots of emails about different studies and surveys that could be participated in. There are surveys put together by undergraduates and graduate students that offer no compensation at all, depending only on the goodwill of fellow students for completion.

At a slightly more rewarding level are raffle surveys, where all participants are entered in a raffle for an iPad mini. It's always for an iPad mini. This is all well and good if you're the one person who wins, but I've never actually heard of anyone getting an iPad mini from these things.

The surveys to really watch out for are of the Amazon-gift-cards-for-your-time model. Surveys with good compensation will often yield better results than surveys with bad compensation because a survey where only willing volunteers with lots of time on their hands bother to answer will most likely biased. If students are being offered money, a more accurate demographic distribution would probably occur.

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